Michael Ridpath's Blog, page 3
July 5, 2022
Ghosts
The Icelandic countryside teems with folk stories. Every village or even farm has one, and they don’t just concern elves. We have heard about the trolls, but there are also sea monsters, seals, serpents, polar bears and sorcerers, as well as assorted goody-goody pastors and saints.
There are also ghosts and ‘seers’.
Most towns still have their seers, or fortune-tellers, and many people will explain that one of their extended family has the gift. The country is also teeming with ghosts.
In general, these are more benign than British ghosts. Like the hidden people, they will offer helpful advice rather than scare the living daylights out of you.
One Icelander told me how a relative was able to communicate with her dead grandmother, who occasionally warned her of impending disaster. This relative was reluctant to admit her ability to anyone; she wasn’t an attention-seeker, and it raised all kinds of problems. What should she do with the information her grandmother gave her? Wouldn’t people think she was crazy if she told them she had been speaking to ghosts? So she kept quiet.
She became a character in Sea of Stone, a farmer’s wife, Aníta, who learns unsettling things during the book that she is unwilling to pass on.
In England, I don’t believe in ghosts, and I wouldn’t dream of writing about a character speaking to the dead. But in Iceland? It almost seems wrong not to. There is something about the country, the light, the shadows, the landscape, the rock, the myths, the desolation that makes you feel that the supernatural is natural.
Every other year, in November, a crime-fiction festival takes place in Reykjavík, known as Iceland Noir. In 2018, a group of about twenty delegates drove up to Snaefellsnes and the lovely Hótel Búdir. After dinner, we repaired to the cosy bar, a lava field and a small, isolated church lurking in the darkness outside. Yrsa suggested that we tell each other ghost stories.
The Icelanders had some great ones, well told, and a couple of the Americans present put in a good performance. The British less so. We are uncomfortable with ghosts. But, as an English rationalist, I felt the odd one out; the one who didn’t get what was obviously all around me.
After half a dozen stories, the hotel receptionist asked if we wanted to hear about the hotel’s ghost. We did. Her name is Pálína and she was a chambermaid at the hotel for many years; her grave is in the graveyard beside the church.
She loved the hotel and she was conscientious. She still is. Staff there have become used to her tidying up late at night; the receptionist recounted several examples. This can be inconvenient. The way the staff persuade her to withdraw and let them get on with things is a simple ‘Thank you, Pálína’, which usually works.
So, if you do come across a ghost in Iceland, be polite.
There are also ghosts and ‘seers’.
Most towns still have their seers, or fortune-tellers, and many people will explain that one of their extended family has the gift. The country is also teeming with ghosts.
In general, these are more benign than British ghosts. Like the hidden people, they will offer helpful advice rather than scare the living daylights out of you.
One Icelander told me how a relative was able to communicate with her dead grandmother, who occasionally warned her of impending disaster. This relative was reluctant to admit her ability to anyone; she wasn’t an attention-seeker, and it raised all kinds of problems. What should she do with the information her grandmother gave her? Wouldn’t people think she was crazy if she told them she had been speaking to ghosts? So she kept quiet.
She became a character in Sea of Stone, a farmer’s wife, Aníta, who learns unsettling things during the book that she is unwilling to pass on.
In England, I don’t believe in ghosts, and I wouldn’t dream of writing about a character speaking to the dead. But in Iceland? It almost seems wrong not to. There is something about the country, the light, the shadows, the landscape, the rock, the myths, the desolation that makes you feel that the supernatural is natural.
Every other year, in November, a crime-fiction festival takes place in Reykjavík, known as Iceland Noir. In 2018, a group of about twenty delegates drove up to Snaefellsnes and the lovely Hótel Búdir. After dinner, we repaired to the cosy bar, a lava field and a small, isolated church lurking in the darkness outside. Yrsa suggested that we tell each other ghost stories.
The Icelanders had some great ones, well told, and a couple of the Americans present put in a good performance. The British less so. We are uncomfortable with ghosts. But, as an English rationalist, I felt the odd one out; the one who didn’t get what was obviously all around me.
After half a dozen stories, the hotel receptionist asked if we wanted to hear about the hotel’s ghost. We did. Her name is Pálína and she was a chambermaid at the hotel for many years; her grave is in the graveyard beside the church.
She loved the hotel and she was conscientious. She still is. Staff there have become used to her tidying up late at night; the receptionist recounted several examples. This can be inconvenient. The way the staff persuade her to withdraw and let them get on with things is a simple ‘Thank you, Pálína’, which usually works.
So, if you do come across a ghost in Iceland, be polite.
May 24, 2022
Elf Deniers vs Elf Believers
There are certain problems with writing about elves. I’m not the kind of guy who believes in them. I write about a tough Boston homicide cop: could Magnus really believe in elves? There are no elves in Raymond Chandler’s books, nor in Agatha Christie or even Ian Rankin.
And what about the elf-deniers? These are modern, sophisticated Icelanders who resent the stereotype that their countrymen are gullible hicks who believe in fairies. They claim that those who say they believe in elves are just lying. There is a lot of elf-related tourist tat in Reykjavík gift shops, and while I have never attended the famous elf school, it does sound a little like a tourist trap to me. So I was nervous: was the whole country winding me up about elves? I wouldn’t put it past them.
But I couldn’t write about Iceland honestly and avoid the subject entirely. It was a problem.
Many Icelanders do take elf dwellings seriously. The Icelandic author, Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, is also a civil engineer. She writes:
"My personal encounters with elves are few, only one to be exact. This was in 1997 and occurred while I was supervising a new pipeline being placed in Mosfellsbaer, a suburb of Reykjavík. The contractor doing the work mentioned in a progress meeting that his equipment kept breaking down while attempting to remove a large boulder smack in the middle of the pipeline’s planned route.
He believed this to be the result of elves, that they were sabotaging his equipment to protect their home. This was noted in the minutes of the meeting and the project owner, Reykjavík Energy, needed no further prompting the pipeline layout was altered to avoid the rock. The equipment worked fine after that."
Do Icelanders believe in elves? A small minority certainly do. Most people’s grandmothers do. Some people don’t, don’t think any of their countrymen do either and are profoundly irritated by foreigners asking them about the subject.
In my experience, many, perhaps most Icelanders keep an open mind. They know that the laws of science suggest that hidden people are unlikely to exist. But they are part of Iceland’s society and culture, and of that traditional way of life and world view which in a couple of short generations is in danger of being lost.
Many Icelanders not only regret that loss, but respect the way that their grandparents lived in a kind of harmony with their landscape. It’s something they want to hold on to.
I heard Ed Miliband, former leader of the British Labour Party, interviewing Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Iceland’s prime minister, on his podcast Reasons to be Cheerful. After a serious discussion on gender inequality in Iceland, he asked her about the elves. You could hear the panic in her voice. What should she do – deny an important part of Icelandic culture or admit to believing in the hidden people?
For a second she seemed to be taking the elf-deniers’ side. But then the seasoned politician took over and she pivoted to trolls, explaining how trolls must be stupid because they always seem to be caught out by the sunrise and turned to stone. Miliband pointed out she had probably lost the troll vote, but in fact, she had deftly avoided the elf wars.
And what about the elf-deniers? These are modern, sophisticated Icelanders who resent the stereotype that their countrymen are gullible hicks who believe in fairies. They claim that those who say they believe in elves are just lying. There is a lot of elf-related tourist tat in Reykjavík gift shops, and while I have never attended the famous elf school, it does sound a little like a tourist trap to me. So I was nervous: was the whole country winding me up about elves? I wouldn’t put it past them.
But I couldn’t write about Iceland honestly and avoid the subject entirely. It was a problem.
Many Icelanders do take elf dwellings seriously. The Icelandic author, Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, is also a civil engineer. She writes:
"My personal encounters with elves are few, only one to be exact. This was in 1997 and occurred while I was supervising a new pipeline being placed in Mosfellsbaer, a suburb of Reykjavík. The contractor doing the work mentioned in a progress meeting that his equipment kept breaking down while attempting to remove a large boulder smack in the middle of the pipeline’s planned route.
He believed this to be the result of elves, that they were sabotaging his equipment to protect their home. This was noted in the minutes of the meeting and the project owner, Reykjavík Energy, needed no further prompting the pipeline layout was altered to avoid the rock. The equipment worked fine after that."
Do Icelanders believe in elves? A small minority certainly do. Most people’s grandmothers do. Some people don’t, don’t think any of their countrymen do either and are profoundly irritated by foreigners asking them about the subject.
In my experience, many, perhaps most Icelanders keep an open mind. They know that the laws of science suggest that hidden people are unlikely to exist. But they are part of Iceland’s society and culture, and of that traditional way of life and world view which in a couple of short generations is in danger of being lost.
Many Icelanders not only regret that loss, but respect the way that their grandparents lived in a kind of harmony with their landscape. It’s something they want to hold on to.
I heard Ed Miliband, former leader of the British Labour Party, interviewing Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Iceland’s prime minister, on his podcast Reasons to be Cheerful. After a serious discussion on gender inequality in Iceland, he asked her about the elves. You could hear the panic in her voice. What should she do – deny an important part of Icelandic culture or admit to believing in the hidden people?
For a second she seemed to be taking the elf-deniers’ side. But then the seasoned politician took over and she pivoted to trolls, explaining how trolls must be stupid because they always seem to be caught out by the sunrise and turned to stone. Miliband pointed out she had probably lost the troll vote, but in fact, she had deftly avoided the elf wars.
May 3, 2022
Elves
I had written two full-length novels set in Iceland, and it was becoming clear that there was a question I could no longer dodge. What was I going to do about the elves?
I have related how I first heard about them, from Helga at that dinner during my book tour to Reykjavík. Naturally, I was intrigued, and when I met Icelanders in London during my initial research, I would casually ask them about the elves, or the ‘hidden people’ as they are often known.
They always took my question seriously. One woman told me that her name had been chosen by a hidden woman, who had whispered it to her grandmother when she was born. You can see from the preceding posts that elves, ghosts and trolls are important in Iceland, even today. My editor was keen that I should include superstition and myth in my books. So I needed to write about elves.
I made an appointment to see Gudjón, a senior diplomat at the Icelandic embassy, and his colleague Ágústa. They were both helpful, informative and down-to-earth. So, at the end of my meeting, I asked them how I should deal with elves.
We had a useful discussion. It turned out Gudjón had an Uncle Gísli who used to play with elves as a child his mother saw him skipping around with them. Afterwards, Gudjón sent me an article about construction problems in the remote town of Bolungarvík.
It was a classic Icelandic elf story. The government was building a tunnel to provide better all-weather access to Bolungarvík, which is stuck at the very north-western edge of Iceland. The tunnel went through a mountain that was known to be the home of hidden people. Two of the diggers mysteriously broke down. And then, while blasting in a local quarry, there was an accident, and large boulders destroyed some local properties. No one was hurt, but the contractor was naturally concerned, as were the town’s residents, many of whom were sure that the incidents were perpetrated by the hidden people angry at the destruction of their home.
The contractor decided to approach locals to help him sort the problem out with the hidden people. The mayor and the town council wanted nothing to do with it, but the priest agreed to say a prayer, and local ‘seers’ undertook to discuss the matter with the hidden people. Which they did, asking their forgiveness and putting on a small concert for their enjoyment. The tunnel was completed without mishap.
My mind started turning. What if there had been a landslide in Bolungarvík and people had actually been killed? In that case, some people might accuse the hidden people of being murderers. And what if Magnus’s boss sent him all the way to Bolungarvík to solve the crime, knowing how frustrating he would find it? Perfect. Thanks to Gudjón, I had my elf story. It’s a novella of about sixty pages, and it’s called Edge of Nowhere. Edge of Nowhere
Who are these elves (álfar), or hidden people (huldufólk)?
First, we need to pin down whether there is a difference between the two. Some Icelanders insist that there is, and that to conflate the two is to show ignorance. But the more you dig the more confusing it becomes. Everyone is sure what a hidden person is, but less clear about elves, if they are not in fact hidden people. Terry Gunnell, Professor of Folklore at the University of Iceland, believes that the confusion comes from the fusion of two parallel sources of the myths: Norse and Irish folk tales.
Hidden people are a lot like other Icelanders. They lead parallel lives, unseen most of the time. They are wary of humans, but willing to help out if need be. They will provide advice if necessary; they will rescue travellers in distress. They can be charming, and there are several cases recorded of shepherd girls going up to the mountains to look after their sheep and being seduced by hidden men. Strangely enough, the resulting babies are always visible; the ‘hidden’ gene must be recessive.
Most farms have a family of hidden people living on or near their property, usually in a prominent rock. This knowledge is passed down through the generations, and locals will be careful not to disturb the hidden people’s dwelling. Hence the Bolungarvík story.
And the famous story of a road near Álftanes, just outside Reykjavík, whose route was slightly changed to avoid dynamiting a rock where elves were known to live. This story is highly contentious: the elf-deniers claim that it was distorted by journalists trying to hype up a non-story.
I have diligently posted every two weeks on this blog for the last eighteen months. Eventually, I am going to run out of material. To push the date when this happens as far as possible into the future, I am going to start posting every three weeks from now on. I hope you can bear to wait that long; somehow I think that if you have stuck with me this long, you probably can.
I have related how I first heard about them, from Helga at that dinner during my book tour to Reykjavík. Naturally, I was intrigued, and when I met Icelanders in London during my initial research, I would casually ask them about the elves, or the ‘hidden people’ as they are often known.
They always took my question seriously. One woman told me that her name had been chosen by a hidden woman, who had whispered it to her grandmother when she was born. You can see from the preceding posts that elves, ghosts and trolls are important in Iceland, even today. My editor was keen that I should include superstition and myth in my books. So I needed to write about elves.
I made an appointment to see Gudjón, a senior diplomat at the Icelandic embassy, and his colleague Ágústa. They were both helpful, informative and down-to-earth. So, at the end of my meeting, I asked them how I should deal with elves.
We had a useful discussion. It turned out Gudjón had an Uncle Gísli who used to play with elves as a child his mother saw him skipping around with them. Afterwards, Gudjón sent me an article about construction problems in the remote town of Bolungarvík.
It was a classic Icelandic elf story. The government was building a tunnel to provide better all-weather access to Bolungarvík, which is stuck at the very north-western edge of Iceland. The tunnel went through a mountain that was known to be the home of hidden people. Two of the diggers mysteriously broke down. And then, while blasting in a local quarry, there was an accident, and large boulders destroyed some local properties. No one was hurt, but the contractor was naturally concerned, as were the town’s residents, many of whom were sure that the incidents were perpetrated by the hidden people angry at the destruction of their home.
The contractor decided to approach locals to help him sort the problem out with the hidden people. The mayor and the town council wanted nothing to do with it, but the priest agreed to say a prayer, and local ‘seers’ undertook to discuss the matter with the hidden people. Which they did, asking their forgiveness and putting on a small concert for their enjoyment. The tunnel was completed without mishap.
My mind started turning. What if there had been a landslide in Bolungarvík and people had actually been killed? In that case, some people might accuse the hidden people of being murderers. And what if Magnus’s boss sent him all the way to Bolungarvík to solve the crime, knowing how frustrating he would find it? Perfect. Thanks to Gudjón, I had my elf story. It’s a novella of about sixty pages, and it’s called Edge of Nowhere. Edge of Nowhere
Who are these elves (álfar), or hidden people (huldufólk)?
First, we need to pin down whether there is a difference between the two. Some Icelanders insist that there is, and that to conflate the two is to show ignorance. But the more you dig the more confusing it becomes. Everyone is sure what a hidden person is, but less clear about elves, if they are not in fact hidden people. Terry Gunnell, Professor of Folklore at the University of Iceland, believes that the confusion comes from the fusion of two parallel sources of the myths: Norse and Irish folk tales.
Hidden people are a lot like other Icelanders. They lead parallel lives, unseen most of the time. They are wary of humans, but willing to help out if need be. They will provide advice if necessary; they will rescue travellers in distress. They can be charming, and there are several cases recorded of shepherd girls going up to the mountains to look after their sheep and being seduced by hidden men. Strangely enough, the resulting babies are always visible; the ‘hidden’ gene must be recessive.
Most farms have a family of hidden people living on or near their property, usually in a prominent rock. This knowledge is passed down through the generations, and locals will be careful not to disturb the hidden people’s dwelling. Hence the Bolungarvík story.
And the famous story of a road near Álftanes, just outside Reykjavík, whose route was slightly changed to avoid dynamiting a rock where elves were known to live. This story is highly contentious: the elf-deniers claim that it was distorted by journalists trying to hype up a non-story.
I have diligently posted every two weeks on this blog for the last eighteen months. Eventually, I am going to run out of material. To push the date when this happens as far as possible into the future, I am going to start posting every three weeks from now on. I hope you can bear to wait that long; somehow I think that if you have stuck with me this long, you probably can.
April 20, 2022
Death in Dalvik is published today!
Death in Dalvik is published today!
It’s the sixth book in the series featuring my Icelandic detective Magnus.
The book is about a schoolgirl named Dísa who manages to bail out her bankrupt grandparents’ farm in Dalvík in North Iceland by trading bitcoin. Her mother catches the cryptocurrency bug and persuades most of the town to invest in a new cryptocoin. Fortunes are lost and the mother ends up dead on a mountainside. Magnus investigates, with a little help from Dísa.
I am self-publishing the book through my Yarmer Head imprint; I have used the same cover designer, copy editor and proofreader as my usual publisher. It should be available in English wherever you are in the world.
The ebook is only available on Kindle. It is priced at £2.99/$3.99 for ten days before the price will go up to £3.99/$5.99.
It’s available in paperback to order from Waterstones, your local bookshop (in theory at least) and Amazon. If you would like a signed copy you can contact my local bookshop, Lutyens and Rubinstein in Notting Hill, London, whose telephone is +44 (0)20 7229 1010 and whose email address is claire@lutyensrubinstein.co.uk. I will come in and sign the copies and they will post them to you, wherever you are.
Please get in touch if you have any questions, and if you do buy it, I hope you enjoy it.
March 22, 2022
The north coast of Snaefellsnes: rugged beauty
I explored the north coast of Snaefellsnes, researching the location for my second novel.
Stykkishólmur is the largest community on the peninsula. A natural harbour is formed by a seabird-strewn island at the mouth of a cove. The harbour is full of fishing boats and a ferry to the West Fjords, on the other side of Breidafjördur.
I dropped in at the local police station to talk to the region’s chief constable and the deputy magistrate, and then went to meet Ásta, an Icelander living in Surrey, who spends her summers in Stykkishólmur working in a hotel there.
She told me a little about her childhood in the town. She was terrified of the Kerlingin troll, whose silhouette could be clearly seen near the mountain pass above the town.
Until recently much of the town was owned by a Franciscan convent, including the regional hospital of St Francis, which is the biggest building in town. Ásta remembered the French and Belgian nuns, who spoke poor Icelandic, conducting their services in Latin with incense; they seemed to Ásta incredibly exotic. I wondered how Stykkishólmur had seemed to the Belgian nuns.
Ásta’s father was from a family of twelve who had grown up on one of the islands in the fjord. There are lots of these, especially just offshore from Stykkishólmur. Apparently, there are two things you cannot count: the stars in the sky and the islands in Breidafjördur. They have tried, of course. They have counted more than three thousand islands at high tide, but if you include the rocks and skerries that emerge at low tide, the number is indeed unknown.
You won’t be surprised to hear how all these islands were created. The Kerlingin troll got angry one night, and she threw three rocks at the people of Stykkishólmur. They missed, but shattered into countless pieces.
This tiny little town is home to one of Iceland’s most extraordinary modern churches. The style is space-age Mexican. Smooth and white, it boasts a sweeping tower with three bells at the top, a smooth nave and a bubble apse at the back. The bell tower and the apse reminded me of churches in New Mexico; the rest of the building recalled science fiction films from the 1960s.
Further out along the peninsula’s north coast, I passed through the fishing villages of Grundarfjördur and Ólafsvík. Just outside Grundarfjördur is one of the most photographed mountains in Iceland, Kirkjufell or ‘Church Fell’. This is a tower of rock and moss that overlooks a calm lagoon.
The shifting light and shadow from the low sunlight at this latitude, the constantly changing clouds and even the Northern Lights, illuminate the rock and the moss of the mountain in a shimmering palette of different colours, all of which are reflected in the water beneath it.
Ólafsvík used to be the port for Greenland, and a few miles west of the town stands the church of Ingjaldshóll. A local story claims that an Italian nobleman came to stay with the priest there many centuries ago. Christopher Columbus recounted in a letter to Queen Isabella that he had once sailed to Iceland on a Bristol merchant ship, and spent a winter there in 1477, fifteen years before he discovered America. When I first heard that it got me thinking: surely there is a book in that somewhere? It took me seven years to find it: The Wanderer.
From Ólafsvík I drove back over the mountain spine of Snaefellsnes. This route was even more remote and desolate than the Kerlingin Pass. I was actually climbing the foothills of the Snaefellsjökull, but it was only when I had descended to the south coast that I could see the mountain properly.
It is an almost perfect conical volcano topped by a glacier. Almost perfect because there seems to be a small stone thorn, which looks a bit like a question mark, that emerges from the summit. Much of the time, you can’t see the top.
Clouds love Snaefellsjökull. Billowing white clouds foam over the summit; angry black clouds gather and brood. Often, one white cloud hovers over the glacier, formed from the warming ice in an otherwise blue sky, while the sunlight strokes the ice in yellow, turning to pink as the afternoon fades.
I have never made it to the top. Apparently, from the summit on a clear day, you can sometimes see the massive white ice cap of Greenland, shimmering upside down just above the horizon, in the polar mirage known to Norwegians as an is-blikk.
It is a special place. Jules Verne came to Iceland and was bewitched. This is the entrance for the Journey to the Centre of the Earth. In more modern times New Age mystics have flocked to the area. Ley lines spread out from the mountain like a star. Arnarstapi, the little town at the foot of the mountain, is a mystic melange of elves, trolls, gnomes, candles and incense. One blue wooden cottage even has a Tao emblem on its wall. It’s all just a little much. However, there is a good walk a couple of kilometres along the black cliffs to the neighbouring village of Hellnar.
Just to the west of Hellnar is the site of the farm where Gudrid the Wanderer was born in about 970. She was born in Iceland, got married in Greenland, had a child in America, returned to Iceland and then travelled to Rome. All in about the year 1000. The farm is now just a meadow with a rather graceful statue of Gudrun and her son Snorri. Sitting there, looking out over the Atlantic, I thought to myself: wouldn’t she make a good book? Another ingredient for what eventually became The Wanderer, published many years later. It is extraordinary how long it can take an idea for a book to take shape.
Stykkishólmur is the largest community on the peninsula. A natural harbour is formed by a seabird-strewn island at the mouth of a cove. The harbour is full of fishing boats and a ferry to the West Fjords, on the other side of Breidafjördur.
I dropped in at the local police station to talk to the region’s chief constable and the deputy magistrate, and then went to meet Ásta, an Icelander living in Surrey, who spends her summers in Stykkishólmur working in a hotel there.
She told me a little about her childhood in the town. She was terrified of the Kerlingin troll, whose silhouette could be clearly seen near the mountain pass above the town.
Until recently much of the town was owned by a Franciscan convent, including the regional hospital of St Francis, which is the biggest building in town. Ásta remembered the French and Belgian nuns, who spoke poor Icelandic, conducting their services in Latin with incense; they seemed to Ásta incredibly exotic. I wondered how Stykkishólmur had seemed to the Belgian nuns.
Ásta’s father was from a family of twelve who had grown up on one of the islands in the fjord. There are lots of these, especially just offshore from Stykkishólmur. Apparently, there are two things you cannot count: the stars in the sky and the islands in Breidafjördur. They have tried, of course. They have counted more than three thousand islands at high tide, but if you include the rocks and skerries that emerge at low tide, the number is indeed unknown.
You won’t be surprised to hear how all these islands were created. The Kerlingin troll got angry one night, and she threw three rocks at the people of Stykkishólmur. They missed, but shattered into countless pieces.
This tiny little town is home to one of Iceland’s most extraordinary modern churches. The style is space-age Mexican. Smooth and white, it boasts a sweeping tower with three bells at the top, a smooth nave and a bubble apse at the back. The bell tower and the apse reminded me of churches in New Mexico; the rest of the building recalled science fiction films from the 1960s.
Further out along the peninsula’s north coast, I passed through the fishing villages of Grundarfjördur and Ólafsvík. Just outside Grundarfjördur is one of the most photographed mountains in Iceland, Kirkjufell or ‘Church Fell’. This is a tower of rock and moss that overlooks a calm lagoon.
The shifting light and shadow from the low sunlight at this latitude, the constantly changing clouds and even the Northern Lights, illuminate the rock and the moss of the mountain in a shimmering palette of different colours, all of which are reflected in the water beneath it.
Ólafsvík used to be the port for Greenland, and a few miles west of the town stands the church of Ingjaldshóll. A local story claims that an Italian nobleman came to stay with the priest there many centuries ago. Christopher Columbus recounted in a letter to Queen Isabella that he had once sailed to Iceland on a Bristol merchant ship, and spent a winter there in 1477, fifteen years before he discovered America. When I first heard that it got me thinking: surely there is a book in that somewhere? It took me seven years to find it: The Wanderer.
From Ólafsvík I drove back over the mountain spine of Snaefellsnes. This route was even more remote and desolate than the Kerlingin Pass. I was actually climbing the foothills of the Snaefellsjökull, but it was only when I had descended to the south coast that I could see the mountain properly.
It is an almost perfect conical volcano topped by a glacier. Almost perfect because there seems to be a small stone thorn, which looks a bit like a question mark, that emerges from the summit. Much of the time, you can’t see the top.
Clouds love Snaefellsjökull. Billowing white clouds foam over the summit; angry black clouds gather and brood. Often, one white cloud hovers over the glacier, formed from the warming ice in an otherwise blue sky, while the sunlight strokes the ice in yellow, turning to pink as the afternoon fades.
I have never made it to the top. Apparently, from the summit on a clear day, you can sometimes see the massive white ice cap of Greenland, shimmering upside down just above the horizon, in the polar mirage known to Norwegians as an is-blikk.
It is a special place. Jules Verne came to Iceland and was bewitched. This is the entrance for the Journey to the Centre of the Earth. In more modern times New Age mystics have flocked to the area. Ley lines spread out from the mountain like a star. Arnarstapi, the little town at the foot of the mountain, is a mystic melange of elves, trolls, gnomes, candles and incense. One blue wooden cottage even has a Tao emblem on its wall. It’s all just a little much. However, there is a good walk a couple of kilometres along the black cliffs to the neighbouring village of Hellnar.
Just to the west of Hellnar is the site of the farm where Gudrid the Wanderer was born in about 970. She was born in Iceland, got married in Greenland, had a child in America, returned to Iceland and then travelled to Rome. All in about the year 1000. The farm is now just a meadow with a rather graceful statue of Gudrun and her son Snorri. Sitting there, looking out over the Atlantic, I thought to myself: wouldn’t she make a good book? Another ingredient for what eventually became The Wanderer, published many years later. It is extraordinary how long it can take an idea for a book to take shape.
March 8, 2022
The holy mountain and Björn's harbour
On my search for mythic Snefellsnes, which I had decided would serve as the setting for my second novel, I drove through the Berserkjahraun lava field to Bjarnarhöfn, Björn's Harbour.
I had tentatively decided that this would be Magnus's grandfather Hallgrímur’s farm. I could have invented a farm; perhaps I should have done. Bad things happen in my books at Bjarnarhöfn, and real farmers live there and have lived there in the past. But I much prefer to write about a real place. It’s not just for the sake of the book; it is for my sake when I am writing it. Bjarnarhöfn is seared into my brain; when I am writing a scene set there, I feel that I am actually at that beautiful spot by the fjord.
And it is a beautiful spot.
It is a large working farm cut off from the rest of Snaefellsnes by mountain, sea and lava. To the east is the Berserkjahraun lava field, to the south, a massive, steep mountain rears up, and to the north and west lies the fjord.
A tiny wooden chapel stands in a meadow between the farm buildings and the sea. This church was built in 1856 and is little more than a one-roomed hut, but it contains a seventeenth-century altarpiece and a thirteenth-century chalice, both gifts from grateful shipwreck survivors. The cove just to the west of the farm is known as Cumberland’s Bay after the English merchants from Cumberland who used to visit there in the Middle Ages.
One of the farm buildings has been converted into a shark museum, stuffed with the old paraphernalia of Icelandic fishermen, but the highlight is the rotten shark, or hákarl. This is an Icelandic delicacy. Greenland shark is buried for a few weeks and then hung in drying racks in the next-door shed to rot.
Eaten raw, or cooked immediately, the meat of this shark is toxic. But left to rot, or rather ferment, it is just about edible. It smells strongly of ammonia, and when you first taste it, it blows out your sinuses. It is best eaten on a toothpick with a chaser of brennivín, an Icelandic schnapps-like spirit that will definitely blow out your sinuses if the shark doesn’t get them first. Some people really like it; some don’t. It is Iceland’s answer to Marmite. You have been warned.
From the farm, one can look east over the sea of lava to the Kerlingin troll with the babies on her back, atop her mountain, and a lonely bump in the plain between the mountains and the fjord. This is Helgafell, or ‘Holy Hill’. It was deemed holy by one of the first settlers in the area, Thorolf Most Beard, who believed his family would enter it after their death and forbade anyone from doing their elf-frighteners on the hill ‘doing your elf-frighteners’ is the polite Viking term for defecating.
In the churchyard at its foot is the grave of Gudrun Osvifursdottir, Iceland’s first nun, and the heroine of The Laxdaela Saga. You will remember she was involved in a bloody love triangle, and her enigmatic last words in the saga are inscribed on a rock at the foot of the hill: ‘To him I was worst whom I loved best.’ If you walk from her grave to the ruined chapel at the top of the hill, in silence and with a pure heart, then your wish will be granted. I climbed the hill, but near the top, I slipped, fell and swore, so my wish wasn’t granted. But I promise I didn’t frighten any elves.
I had tentatively decided that this would be Magnus's grandfather Hallgrímur’s farm. I could have invented a farm; perhaps I should have done. Bad things happen in my books at Bjarnarhöfn, and real farmers live there and have lived there in the past. But I much prefer to write about a real place. It’s not just for the sake of the book; it is for my sake when I am writing it. Bjarnarhöfn is seared into my brain; when I am writing a scene set there, I feel that I am actually at that beautiful spot by the fjord.
And it is a beautiful spot.
It is a large working farm cut off from the rest of Snaefellsnes by mountain, sea and lava. To the east is the Berserkjahraun lava field, to the south, a massive, steep mountain rears up, and to the north and west lies the fjord.
A tiny wooden chapel stands in a meadow between the farm buildings and the sea. This church was built in 1856 and is little more than a one-roomed hut, but it contains a seventeenth-century altarpiece and a thirteenth-century chalice, both gifts from grateful shipwreck survivors. The cove just to the west of the farm is known as Cumberland’s Bay after the English merchants from Cumberland who used to visit there in the Middle Ages.
One of the farm buildings has been converted into a shark museum, stuffed with the old paraphernalia of Icelandic fishermen, but the highlight is the rotten shark, or hákarl. This is an Icelandic delicacy. Greenland shark is buried for a few weeks and then hung in drying racks in the next-door shed to rot.
Eaten raw, or cooked immediately, the meat of this shark is toxic. But left to rot, or rather ferment, it is just about edible. It smells strongly of ammonia, and when you first taste it, it blows out your sinuses. It is best eaten on a toothpick with a chaser of brennivín, an Icelandic schnapps-like spirit that will definitely blow out your sinuses if the shark doesn’t get them first. Some people really like it; some don’t. It is Iceland’s answer to Marmite. You have been warned.
From the farm, one can look east over the sea of lava to the Kerlingin troll with the babies on her back, atop her mountain, and a lonely bump in the plain between the mountains and the fjord. This is Helgafell, or ‘Holy Hill’. It was deemed holy by one of the first settlers in the area, Thorolf Most Beard, who believed his family would enter it after their death and forbade anyone from doing their elf-frighteners on the hill ‘doing your elf-frighteners’ is the polite Viking term for defecating.
In the churchyard at its foot is the grave of Gudrun Osvifursdottir, Iceland’s first nun, and the heroine of The Laxdaela Saga. You will remember she was involved in a bloody love triangle, and her enigmatic last words in the saga are inscribed on a rock at the foot of the hill: ‘To him I was worst whom I loved best.’ If you walk from her grave to the ruined chapel at the top of the hill, in silence and with a pure heart, then your wish will be granted. I climbed the hill, but near the top, I slipped, fell and swore, so my wish wasn’t granted. But I promise I didn’t frighten any elves.
February 22, 2022
Driving north: winds, fjords and twisted rock
I had identified Snaefellsnes as a likely location for some mythic background for my second novel, so I needed to check it out.
I jumped on a flight to Iceland, hired a car, and drove north. I passed by Reykjavík and turned on to the Ring Road. This is Iceland’s main road, and it is well maintained. It circumnavigates the island, a distance of about 1,300 kilometres. I haven’t yet driven the whole distance, but I am determined to do it one day.
North from Reykjavík the road ducks through the tunnel under deep Hvalfjördur, then emerges and follows the fjord inland for a few kilometres, rounding a mountain on the inland side, and then emerging on one of the most windswept stretches of road in Iceland.
The road is raised and follows a curve with the sea and the flat islands of Borgarfjördur on one side and a high smooth-sloped fell on the other. Gusts of wind are so strong here that cars can be blown off the road. I kept both hands tight on the wheel, and although I could feel the car being buffeted, I made it over the long low bridge that crosses the road to Borgarnes, the main town in the western region.
Just north of Borgarnes, the road forks, and I turned left along a stretch of empty highway, passing the warrior-poet Egil’s farmstead at Borg. On one side, in the distance, I could see the whitecaps of the sea. On the other a high wall of green and grey mountain, a curtain of stone through which the clouds danced, sometimes white and ethereal, sometimes black and threatening.
Rain showers came and went, speeding in from the sea, occasionally followed by strips of sunshine and spectacular rainbows. Time to crank up Beethoven’s Fifth on the car’s CD.
Rivers tumbled down in waterfalls from the mountains, hurrying underneath the road towards the coast, water skipping over rocky ledges and pausing for respite in deep clear pools. I passed occasional farms, each with its lush green home meadow, and horses standing hopefully in the fields. What they were hoping for I was not quite sure.
A volcano had spewed its molten guts here several thousand years ago, and left walls of frozen stone, nibbled by green and orange moss. A bump appeared in the distance, and grew: a flat rim like an upturned saucer Eldborg, the dormant crater that had presumably created all this mess.
The road veered to the left just past the crater,and ventured out on to Snaefellsnes. I could see the south shore of the peninsula and the bottom of the volcano, but it and the ridge of mountains that runs along the spine of the peninsula were shrouded in cloud.
At Vegamót, a name on a map that just means ‘Where the roads meet’ and consists of barely more than three buildings, I turned right and climbed a valley cut into the flank of this mountain ridge. This is known as the Kerlingin Pass after the Kerlingin troll. She used to creep down from the mountain at night to steal babies from the local town of Stykkishólmur.
Trolls have to get back to their cave by daybreak, but one morning she was too late and became frozen in stone. You can see her up above the old pass which runs parallel to the road, a column of rock with a sack of babies over her shoulder (see picture below), but at that moment she was covered in cloud.
The valley became increasingly narrow as the road rose ever higher, a stream rushing down beside it. Sheep looked up and ran across the road in front of me, timing their foray perfectly so I had to brake. Ewes were followed by lambs as big or bigger than them, desperate for an udder. It was damp, lonely and a great place for a chase at the end of a book.
I was in the cloud now, driving slowly. I rounded a sharp bend, and the road began to descend. In a minute or so I emerged from the cloud into bright blue sky, and a view that blew me away. In front of me was Breidafjördur, or ‘Broad Fjord’, with its countless islands.
Closer by were extraordinary hills, piles of rock and metal that had been created by volcanic activity, hundreds of feet high. Their flanks were brown and grey, but also yellow and red, orange and green as the various metals infused in their fabric had oxidized. Beneath these hills tumbled a sea of stone, waves of frozen lava a hundred feet high marching down to the sea. A single red hut cowered beneath the rock, perched on the edge of a winding lake created by the lava flow several thousand years ago.
And there, along the seashore stood just two farms, the same farms that had stood there a thousand years ago when Vermund the Lean and his brother Styr inhabited them: Bjarnarhöfn and Hraun.
The lava field was, of course, the Berserkjahraun.
I jumped on a flight to Iceland, hired a car, and drove north. I passed by Reykjavík and turned on to the Ring Road. This is Iceland’s main road, and it is well maintained. It circumnavigates the island, a distance of about 1,300 kilometres. I haven’t yet driven the whole distance, but I am determined to do it one day.
North from Reykjavík the road ducks through the tunnel under deep Hvalfjördur, then emerges and follows the fjord inland for a few kilometres, rounding a mountain on the inland side, and then emerging on one of the most windswept stretches of road in Iceland.
The road is raised and follows a curve with the sea and the flat islands of Borgarfjördur on one side and a high smooth-sloped fell on the other. Gusts of wind are so strong here that cars can be blown off the road. I kept both hands tight on the wheel, and although I could feel the car being buffeted, I made it over the long low bridge that crosses the road to Borgarnes, the main town in the western region.
Just north of Borgarnes, the road forks, and I turned left along a stretch of empty highway, passing the warrior-poet Egil’s farmstead at Borg. On one side, in the distance, I could see the whitecaps of the sea. On the other a high wall of green and grey mountain, a curtain of stone through which the clouds danced, sometimes white and ethereal, sometimes black and threatening.
Rain showers came and went, speeding in from the sea, occasionally followed by strips of sunshine and spectacular rainbows. Time to crank up Beethoven’s Fifth on the car’s CD.
Rivers tumbled down in waterfalls from the mountains, hurrying underneath the road towards the coast, water skipping over rocky ledges and pausing for respite in deep clear pools. I passed occasional farms, each with its lush green home meadow, and horses standing hopefully in the fields. What they were hoping for I was not quite sure.
A volcano had spewed its molten guts here several thousand years ago, and left walls of frozen stone, nibbled by green and orange moss. A bump appeared in the distance, and grew: a flat rim like an upturned saucer Eldborg, the dormant crater that had presumably created all this mess.
The road veered to the left just past the crater,and ventured out on to Snaefellsnes. I could see the south shore of the peninsula and the bottom of the volcano, but it and the ridge of mountains that runs along the spine of the peninsula were shrouded in cloud.
At Vegamót, a name on a map that just means ‘Where the roads meet’ and consists of barely more than three buildings, I turned right and climbed a valley cut into the flank of this mountain ridge. This is known as the Kerlingin Pass after the Kerlingin troll. She used to creep down from the mountain at night to steal babies from the local town of Stykkishólmur.
Trolls have to get back to their cave by daybreak, but one morning she was too late and became frozen in stone. You can see her up above the old pass which runs parallel to the road, a column of rock with a sack of babies over her shoulder (see picture below), but at that moment she was covered in cloud.
The valley became increasingly narrow as the road rose ever higher, a stream rushing down beside it. Sheep looked up and ran across the road in front of me, timing their foray perfectly so I had to brake. Ewes were followed by lambs as big or bigger than them, desperate for an udder. It was damp, lonely and a great place for a chase at the end of a book.
I was in the cloud now, driving slowly. I rounded a sharp bend, and the road began to descend. In a minute or so I emerged from the cloud into bright blue sky, and a view that blew me away. In front of me was Breidafjördur, or ‘Broad Fjord’, with its countless islands.
Closer by were extraordinary hills, piles of rock and metal that had been created by volcanic activity, hundreds of feet high. Their flanks were brown and grey, but also yellow and red, orange and green as the various metals infused in their fabric had oxidized. Beneath these hills tumbled a sea of stone, waves of frozen lava a hundred feet high marching down to the sea. A single red hut cowered beneath the rock, perched on the edge of a winding lake created by the lava flow several thousand years ago.
And there, along the seashore stood just two farms, the same farms that had stood there a thousand years ago when Vermund the Lean and his brother Styr inhabited them: Bjarnarhöfn and Hraun.
The lava field was, of course, the Berserkjahraun.
February 9, 2022
Snaefellsnes: in search of myth and superstition
I wrote my story about my demonstrators in the Parliament Square, and their plans to take justice into their own hands. I called it 66 Degrees North, which is the latitude upon which Iceland sits. It’s also the name of an Icelandic clothing company. I checked and they were quite happy to have their brand as the title of the book.
Unfortunately, my US publishers decided that Americans wouldn’t understand the concept of latitude, and so the book is called Far North in America. This is inconvenient for everyone: in an age of social media which transcends boundaries, I live in fear that some of my American readers will buy the same book twice. And, as far as I can tell, Americans do understand the concept of latitude.
I sent the book to Nic, my editor at Corvus. He liked the story. But he said it should include some of the myth and superstition that infused my first book, Where the Shadows Lie. Very occasionally editors try to make you do things that make no sense to you. Sometimes you need to be persuaded. More often they are clearly absolutely right. This was one of those times.
There were three possibilities to add myth and/or superstition: ghosts, elves or the sagas. I wasn’t yet confident in my ability to handle ghosts or elves, that would come later, but I loved the sagas. So I needed a saga.
And a subplot. In Shadows I had referred to the death of Magnus’s father when he was twenty in America. Perhaps it had something to do with his family back in Iceland, the grandfather’s farm where Magnus had stayed when he was a boy? I could create all kinds of flashbacks and conflicts in a farm somewhere in rural Iceland. Yes, I needed a farm.
I had another look at Iceland Saga by Magnus Magnusson, and came upon the story of the Berserkjahraun, or ‘Berserkers’ Lava Field’ told in The Saga of the People of Eyri, otherwise known as the Eyrbyggja Saga. I’ve always been intrigued by berserkers, those Scandinavian warriors who would drive themselves into a frenzy and go berserk in the middle of a battle and kill everybody around them, so I read the saga for myself.
Eyri refers to Snaefellsnes, the peninsula that juts out to the west of Iceland about 120 kilometres due north of Reykjavík as the raven flies. At the tip of this peninsula rises Snaefellsjökull, the volcano in the shape of a perfect cone which you can sometimes see from the capital.
The Berserkjahraun is a lava field that flows in an immense river of stone from the mountains that form the spine of Snaefellsnes to the sea on its northern shore. In the saga, there were two farms on either side of the lava field: Bjarnarhöfn, meaning Bjorn’s harbour, and Hraun, meaning lava field. Bjorn, the son of Ketil Flat-Nose and brother of Aud of the deep mind, was the original settler at Bjarnarhöfn.
A hundred years later, Vermund the Lean lived at Bjarnarhöfn and his brother Styr lived at Hraun. There was only a couple of kilometres between them, but the lava field was impassable.
Vermund went raiding and trading in Norway and returned with a gift from the King of Sweden: two berserkers. When he arrived back at Bjarnarhöfn, he found the berserkers too much trouble to control, and gave them to his brother Styr at Hraun. They worked hard, but one of them fancied Styr’s daughter and wanted to marry her. Since the berserker had no money to pay for her, Styr said he could only marry his daughter if the berserkers cut a path through the lava field.
The berserkers set to work furiously, and eventually cut the path. They were exhausted. Styr suggested that they rest in his new sauna, which they did. Styr poured water through the skylight of the sauna, which became so hot the berserkers rushed out, whereupon Styr ran them through with a spear.
I liked that story. Maybe Magnus’s grandfather could have a farm by the Berserkjahraun, at Bjarnarhöfn perhaps? I could start the book with the grandfather, whose name was Hallgrímur, playing berserkers in the lava field as a child in the 1930s.
Unfortunately, my US publishers decided that Americans wouldn’t understand the concept of latitude, and so the book is called Far North in America. This is inconvenient for everyone: in an age of social media which transcends boundaries, I live in fear that some of my American readers will buy the same book twice. And, as far as I can tell, Americans do understand the concept of latitude.
I sent the book to Nic, my editor at Corvus. He liked the story. But he said it should include some of the myth and superstition that infused my first book, Where the Shadows Lie. Very occasionally editors try to make you do things that make no sense to you. Sometimes you need to be persuaded. More often they are clearly absolutely right. This was one of those times.
There were three possibilities to add myth and/or superstition: ghosts, elves or the sagas. I wasn’t yet confident in my ability to handle ghosts or elves, that would come later, but I loved the sagas. So I needed a saga.
And a subplot. In Shadows I had referred to the death of Magnus’s father when he was twenty in America. Perhaps it had something to do with his family back in Iceland, the grandfather’s farm where Magnus had stayed when he was a boy? I could create all kinds of flashbacks and conflicts in a farm somewhere in rural Iceland. Yes, I needed a farm.
I had another look at Iceland Saga by Magnus Magnusson, and came upon the story of the Berserkjahraun, or ‘Berserkers’ Lava Field’ told in The Saga of the People of Eyri, otherwise known as the Eyrbyggja Saga. I’ve always been intrigued by berserkers, those Scandinavian warriors who would drive themselves into a frenzy and go berserk in the middle of a battle and kill everybody around them, so I read the saga for myself.
Eyri refers to Snaefellsnes, the peninsula that juts out to the west of Iceland about 120 kilometres due north of Reykjavík as the raven flies. At the tip of this peninsula rises Snaefellsjökull, the volcano in the shape of a perfect cone which you can sometimes see from the capital.
The Berserkjahraun is a lava field that flows in an immense river of stone from the mountains that form the spine of Snaefellsnes to the sea on its northern shore. In the saga, there were two farms on either side of the lava field: Bjarnarhöfn, meaning Bjorn’s harbour, and Hraun, meaning lava field. Bjorn, the son of Ketil Flat-Nose and brother of Aud of the deep mind, was the original settler at Bjarnarhöfn.
A hundred years later, Vermund the Lean lived at Bjarnarhöfn and his brother Styr lived at Hraun. There was only a couple of kilometres between them, but the lava field was impassable.
Vermund went raiding and trading in Norway and returned with a gift from the King of Sweden: two berserkers. When he arrived back at Bjarnarhöfn, he found the berserkers too much trouble to control, and gave them to his brother Styr at Hraun. They worked hard, but one of them fancied Styr’s daughter and wanted to marry her. Since the berserker had no money to pay for her, Styr said he could only marry his daughter if the berserkers cut a path through the lava field.
The berserkers set to work furiously, and eventually cut the path. They were exhausted. Styr suggested that they rest in his new sauna, which they did. Styr poured water through the skylight of the sauna, which became so hot the berserkers rushed out, whereupon Styr ran them through with a spear.
I liked that story. Maybe Magnus’s grandfather could have a farm by the Berserkjahraun, at Bjarnarhöfn perhaps? I could start the book with the grandfather, whose name was Hallgrímur, playing berserkers in the lava field as a child in the 1930s.
January 25, 2022
Lilja's Richard Museum
I am breaking out of my narrative flow with this blog post which describes a visit to a certain museum in Reykjavik. We will call it Lilja's Richard Museum. Why Richard?
There is a big problem with this post, and it's the algorithms. The post is about a museum in Reykjavik devoted to a part of the male anatomy. I'm worried that if I use the normal precise anatomical description it will tickle the various algorithms and bots which will read this post in its various guises with unpleasant consequences. So I have decided to call the member in question Richard. Could have been William, I suppose.
So, let me tell you about Lilja'a Richard Museum.
This is such a typically Icelandic story. I was in Reykjavik recently, for Iceland Noir, which is a crime festival in Iceland that takes place every couple of years. After our panel in the afternoon, the excellent Icelandic crime writer Lilja Sigurdardóttir suggested that we join her for dinner. Nothing odd about that. But then she suggested we go to her family's Richard museum, where they do delicious Richard-shaped waffles.
So we went. On the way, Lilja explained how her father had started the museum. He had begun putting together a collection of the Richards of all Icelandic mammals from the very large (whale) to teeny-tiny (mouse - requires magnifying glass). He started amassing the exhibits when Lilja was a child. Then he opened the collection up to the public and moved it into a space close to the whale museum in Húsavík. He added his own carvings and certain human exhibits. The museum was so popular that it was moved to Reykjavík a couple of years ago.
It may sound to you as if Lija's father – Sigurdur Hjartarson is his name – was a bit of a disreputable showman, but far from it. He was a history teacher, particularly interested in Christopher Columbus and his visit to Iceland – you may remember this played a prominent role in my book The Wanderer. And his attitude is a mixture of serious and playful that works very well.
The truth is, you don't get to see the Richards of the animal kingdom very much, unless you live on a farm. Most of these Richards are standing to attention, and um, depending on what sex you are and your general sociability, many of us haven't seen very many human Richards in that state. So the museum was surprisingly interesting and yet still very funny.
A bit like Iceland really.
I can recommend the café. The Richard waffles were surprisingly tasty, as was the Iceland Richard Ale and the Philic Pilsner.
There is a big problem with this post, and it's the algorithms. The post is about a museum in Reykjavik devoted to a part of the male anatomy. I'm worried that if I use the normal precise anatomical description it will tickle the various algorithms and bots which will read this post in its various guises with unpleasant consequences. So I have decided to call the member in question Richard. Could have been William, I suppose.
So, let me tell you about Lilja'a Richard Museum.
This is such a typically Icelandic story. I was in Reykjavik recently, for Iceland Noir, which is a crime festival in Iceland that takes place every couple of years. After our panel in the afternoon, the excellent Icelandic crime writer Lilja Sigurdardóttir suggested that we join her for dinner. Nothing odd about that. But then she suggested we go to her family's Richard museum, where they do delicious Richard-shaped waffles.
So we went. On the way, Lilja explained how her father had started the museum. He had begun putting together a collection of the Richards of all Icelandic mammals from the very large (whale) to teeny-tiny (mouse - requires magnifying glass). He started amassing the exhibits when Lilja was a child. Then he opened the collection up to the public and moved it into a space close to the whale museum in Húsavík. He added his own carvings and certain human exhibits. The museum was so popular that it was moved to Reykjavík a couple of years ago.
It may sound to you as if Lija's father – Sigurdur Hjartarson is his name – was a bit of a disreputable showman, but far from it. He was a history teacher, particularly interested in Christopher Columbus and his visit to Iceland – you may remember this played a prominent role in my book The Wanderer. And his attitude is a mixture of serious and playful that works very well.
The truth is, you don't get to see the Richards of the animal kingdom very much, unless you live on a farm. Most of these Richards are standing to attention, and um, depending on what sex you are and your general sociability, many of us haven't seen very many human Richards in that state. So the museum was surprisingly interesting and yet still very funny.
A bit like Iceland really.
I can recommend the café. The Richard waffles were surprisingly tasty, as was the Iceland Richard Ale and the Philic Pilsner.
January 11, 2022
One man and two women men walk into a bar: a banker, a priest and a detective
I was still on the hunt for real-live Icelanders with which I could people my second Magnus novel.
I met Birna, a middle executive in one of the banks, who had lost all of her savings in the bank’s money-market fund, and then her job. In London I met Kristján, an Icelandic graduate student. Pétur told me about Icelandic writers. I was getting to know my characters.
Now we come back to the thorny issue of stereotypes. In the first draft of my very first financial thriller, I included a character who was the ‘muscle’ working for an American businessman. I called him Luigi, gave him thick dark hair and an overcoat. As one of my friends said, he was a cliché. So it’s all very well figuring out what a typical Icelandic fisherman, or student, or banker is like, but sometimes you need to make them different from the typical.
An example is Hákon, a rural priest in Where the Shadows Lie. I found myself an Icelandic priest, a woman named Sara, and she gave me a portrait of a typical cleric living in the countryside. He would be big, bearded, an amateur scholar, conservative, old-fashioned, possibly with responsibility for working the farm attached to his church. He would be interested in the devil and be willing to wield the appropriate prayers to get rid of him. Apparently, the devil is big in Lutheran theology, and fear of the devil is certainly a part of rural superstition.
The Reverend Sara and I discussed what atypical interests or hobbies the priest might have that would nevertheless make sense. We decided he liked heavy metal, especially Led Zeppelin. In the book, Hákon sits in his isolated vicarage by his lonely church in the dale at Hruni and cranks up ‘The Battle of Evermore’ to full volume. It works for me.
For me, my most interesting recurring character is Vigdís. She is Magnus’s sidekick, a detective constable in the Reykjavík Violent Crimes Unit. Sidekicks are common in detective fiction, from Sherlock Holmes’s friend Dr Watson onwards. They perform a useful function in a story: they are a foil for the detective to test out theories, they create conflict, they provide a different perspective, and they are an ingredient in possible subplots.
I wanted to make Vigdís a little different. I decided to make her the opposite of the classic image of a young Icelandic woman. I decided to make her black.
When I suggested this to Icelanders, they explained that there were very few female detectives in Iceland, and that there was no chance that there could ever be a black one. I took that as a challenge: I would invent one. Vigdís.
There are not many black people in Iceland. Some are recent immigrants: unlikely for a police officer. Some were adopted – that was possible. But I decided it would be more interesting if Vigdís was the daughter of a black US serviceman at the Keflavík airbase and an Icelandic woman who worked there. That idea I liked.
I have never witnessed any racism in Iceland, and indeed the English-language journalism in the country is uniformly tolerant and encouraging of ethnic diversity. But a number of Icelanders have told me that some of their compatriots can be racist. This might be expected in a society as homogenous and isolated as Iceland’s.
I remember working on a farm in Norway when I was eighteen and being surprised by the attitude towards black people of the very kind farmer’s wife. She had just never met one before. During the Second World War, the Icelandic Prime Minister Hermann Jónsson requested that the Americans refrain from sending any black servicemen to their airbase at Keflavík, a prohibition that persisted until 1972.
Vigdís never met her father, and so was brought up by her mother – her last name, Audardóttir, references her mother Audur rather than her father. Her mother is an alcoholic, a depressingly common problem in Iceland.
Vigdís has dark skin, but rather than embracing her blackness, she chooses to deny it. Strangers speak to her in English, assuming she is a foreigner, but she refuses to answer in that language. In fact, she refuses to speak it at all. She sees herself as an Icelander through and through, but her compatriots don’t always agree. The ambiguous attitude that she has to her Icelandic identity is something she and Magnus have in common. Her race causes her difficulties; I like difficulties in a novel.
I have identified a couple of mixed-race Icelanders with whom I could discuss Vigdís. Together we could talk about her character, change it, make Vigdís more like them. But I’m not going to do that. To me, Vigdís is a real character, and I’m not going to let anyone mess with her. Apart from me. Sometimes you just have to use your imagination.
I met Birna, a middle executive in one of the banks, who had lost all of her savings in the bank’s money-market fund, and then her job. In London I met Kristján, an Icelandic graduate student. Pétur told me about Icelandic writers. I was getting to know my characters.
Now we come back to the thorny issue of stereotypes. In the first draft of my very first financial thriller, I included a character who was the ‘muscle’ working for an American businessman. I called him Luigi, gave him thick dark hair and an overcoat. As one of my friends said, he was a cliché. So it’s all very well figuring out what a typical Icelandic fisherman, or student, or banker is like, but sometimes you need to make them different from the typical.
An example is Hákon, a rural priest in Where the Shadows Lie. I found myself an Icelandic priest, a woman named Sara, and she gave me a portrait of a typical cleric living in the countryside. He would be big, bearded, an amateur scholar, conservative, old-fashioned, possibly with responsibility for working the farm attached to his church. He would be interested in the devil and be willing to wield the appropriate prayers to get rid of him. Apparently, the devil is big in Lutheran theology, and fear of the devil is certainly a part of rural superstition.
The Reverend Sara and I discussed what atypical interests or hobbies the priest might have that would nevertheless make sense. We decided he liked heavy metal, especially Led Zeppelin. In the book, Hákon sits in his isolated vicarage by his lonely church in the dale at Hruni and cranks up ‘The Battle of Evermore’ to full volume. It works for me.
For me, my most interesting recurring character is Vigdís. She is Magnus’s sidekick, a detective constable in the Reykjavík Violent Crimes Unit. Sidekicks are common in detective fiction, from Sherlock Holmes’s friend Dr Watson onwards. They perform a useful function in a story: they are a foil for the detective to test out theories, they create conflict, they provide a different perspective, and they are an ingredient in possible subplots.
I wanted to make Vigdís a little different. I decided to make her the opposite of the classic image of a young Icelandic woman. I decided to make her black.
When I suggested this to Icelanders, they explained that there were very few female detectives in Iceland, and that there was no chance that there could ever be a black one. I took that as a challenge: I would invent one. Vigdís.
There are not many black people in Iceland. Some are recent immigrants: unlikely for a police officer. Some were adopted – that was possible. But I decided it would be more interesting if Vigdís was the daughter of a black US serviceman at the Keflavík airbase and an Icelandic woman who worked there. That idea I liked.
I have never witnessed any racism in Iceland, and indeed the English-language journalism in the country is uniformly tolerant and encouraging of ethnic diversity. But a number of Icelanders have told me that some of their compatriots can be racist. This might be expected in a society as homogenous and isolated as Iceland’s.
I remember working on a farm in Norway when I was eighteen and being surprised by the attitude towards black people of the very kind farmer’s wife. She had just never met one before. During the Second World War, the Icelandic Prime Minister Hermann Jónsson requested that the Americans refrain from sending any black servicemen to their airbase at Keflavík, a prohibition that persisted until 1972.
Vigdís never met her father, and so was brought up by her mother – her last name, Audardóttir, references her mother Audur rather than her father. Her mother is an alcoholic, a depressingly common problem in Iceland.
Vigdís has dark skin, but rather than embracing her blackness, she chooses to deny it. Strangers speak to her in English, assuming she is a foreigner, but she refuses to answer in that language. In fact, she refuses to speak it at all. She sees herself as an Icelander through and through, but her compatriots don’t always agree. The ambiguous attitude that she has to her Icelandic identity is something she and Magnus have in common. Her race causes her difficulties; I like difficulties in a novel.
I have identified a couple of mixed-race Icelanders with whom I could discuss Vigdís. Together we could talk about her character, change it, make Vigdís more like them. But I’m not going to do that. To me, Vigdís is a real character, and I’m not going to let anyone mess with her. Apart from me. Sometimes you just have to use your imagination.
