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Out of Thin Air: A True Story of Impossible Murder in Iceland
In 1974, two men vanished without a trace under suspicious circumstances, shocking the people of Iceland, where serious crime is almost non-existent. More than a year later there seemed to be a breakthrough when a small-time crook named Erla Bolladottir described a dream to police that they interpreted as a sign of trauma related to the men’s disappearance. After lengthy interrogations, investigations and courtroom dramas, Erla and five acquaintances confessed to killing both men and were given prison sentences ranging from three years to life. But over the years the case against the convicted six began to disintegrate, and one major question remained Why had they all confessed to murder if they hadn’t done it? Out of Thin Air joins Erla in the present day as she pursues her exoneration, exploring the many facets of this bizarre and bewildering case and the social and cultural history of Iceland, a country of vast landscapes, extreme weather and strange folklore, where more than eighty per cent of the population believes that elves might exist.
304 pages, Paperback
First published April 3, 2018
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1225 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 119 reviews
June 26, 2018
I knew a little about this case before reading as I’ve seen the BBC Storyville documentary about it. It’s a pretty interesting true-crime case that still to this day has people baffled. The book does a great job of giving you all the facts and information, it’s also really well written and set out for people that may not have had previous knowledge like myself.
I really enjoyed how it was also at times a little bit of a history of Iceland, normally I don’t like when books go off track but I rather enjoyed it with this. All the little tidbits about Iceland were so interesting and even though this is a book about 2 murders, I would move there in a heartbeat if I could.
If you dig a true-crime take to get you thinking and inspire your inner armchair detective then you should definitely check this one out.
All in all, it’s a great read,
I really enjoyed how it was also at times a little bit of a history of Iceland, normally I don’t like when books go off track but I rather enjoyed it with this. All the little tidbits about Iceland were so interesting and even though this is a book about 2 murders, I would move there in a heartbeat if I could.
If you dig a true-crime take to get you thinking and inspire your inner armchair detective then you should definitely check this one out.
All in all, it’s a great read,
Read
January 13, 2025Entoni Adinin “Heç nədən” əsəri İslandiyada baş vermiş iki sirli itkin hadisəsi ətrafında cərəyan edən qeyri-adi bir cinayət araşdırmasını diqqət mərkəzinə gətirir. Bu yalnız bir hüquqi sirrin açılması hekayəsi deyil, həm də insan yaddaşı, manipulyasiya və cəmiyyətin kollektiv qorxuları ilə üzləşmə haqqında bir kitabdır. Müəllif hadisələri detallı şəkildə incələyərək oxucunu təkcə faktlarla tanış etməklə kifayətlənmir, həm də onları hadisələrin mərkəzinə çəkir. Bu kitabda sıravi bir detektiv hekayəsi ilə deyil, psixoloji və sosial təhlillə də qarşılaşırıq.
1974-cü ildə iki fərqli şəxsin itkin düşməsi İslandiya tarixində ən çox müzakirə olunan cinayət işlərindən birinə çevrildi. On illər sonra belə, hadisə ilə bağlı qaranlıq məqamlar hələ də müzakirə olunur. Polisin bu hadisələri araşdırarkən etdiyi səhvlər, təzyiq altında alınan yalançı etiraflar və cəmiyyətdə yaranan paranoya havası təkcə hüquqi sistemin deyil, həm də insan təbiətinin zəifliklərini göz önünə sərir. Edin həmin dövrün sosial və mədəni atmosferini də oxucunun diqqətinə çatdıraraq, cinayət araşdırmasının necə bir ictimai şouya çevrildiyini nümayiş etdirir.
“…Bəs qaranlıq qış gecələrində daha nə ilə məşğul olmaq olardı? Axşam əyləncələrinin ruhu insanların dözümlülüyünü artırırdı. Əhvalat danışmaq və dinləmək həm də sağ qalmağın bir yolu idi…”
“Erla insanların onu anlamağını istəyir, amma kiminsə ona yazığı gələndə, hətta səmimi-qəlbdən yazığı gələndə hirslənirdi…”
“Erlanın kabus və qorxulu yuxu arasında qoyduğu fərq maraqlı idi. Onun dediyinə görə, qorxulu yuxudan ayılırsan və bunun yuxu olduğunu anlayırsan, kabus isə yuxudan ayıldıqdan sonra da davam edir…”
1974-cü ildə iki fərqli şəxsin itkin düşməsi İslandiya tarixində ən çox müzakirə olunan cinayət işlərindən birinə çevrildi. On illər sonra belə, hadisə ilə bağlı qaranlıq məqamlar hələ də müzakirə olunur. Polisin bu hadisələri araşdırarkən etdiyi səhvlər, təzyiq altında alınan yalançı etiraflar və cəmiyyətdə yaranan paranoya havası təkcə hüquqi sistemin deyil, həm də insan təbiətinin zəifliklərini göz önünə sərir. Edin həmin dövrün sosial və mədəni atmosferini də oxucunun diqqətinə çatdıraraq, cinayət araşdırmasının necə bir ictimai şouya çevrildiyini nümayiş etdirir.
“…Bəs qaranlıq qış gecələrində daha nə ilə məşğul olmaq olardı? Axşam əyləncələrinin ruhu insanların dözümlülüyünü artırırdı. Əhvalat danışmaq və dinləmək həm də sağ qalmağın bir yolu idi…”
“Erla insanların onu anlamağını istəyir, amma kiminsə ona yazığı gələndə, hətta səmimi-qəlbdən yazığı gələndə hirslənirdi…”
“Erlanın kabus və qorxulu yuxu arasında qoyduğu fərq maraqlı idi. Onun dediyinə görə, qorxulu yuxudan ayılırsan və bunun yuxu olduğunu anlayırsan, kabus isə yuxudan ayıldıqdan sonra da davam edir…”
August 4, 2018
In 1974, two men in Iceland, ten months apart, seemingly vanished. While the two men lived miles apart, were nearly 20 years apart in age, and had different professions, Iceland had never experienced anything like it. This is the story of “Out of Thin Air” where the author Anthony Adeane seeks to reconstruct what happened to these men, the people eventually charged for it, and Iceland as a country.
It is also the story of the limits of human memory and how susceptible it is to coercion and suggestion.
When the police eventually settled on a group of suspects in their early 20’s, they all were adamant that they had nothing to do with the crime. As time passed and they spent increasing long hours in isolation (one suspect spent well over 600 days in isolation before finally “confessing”) and under duress from constant interrogation, the suspects began to believe they were in fact guilty, each one construct a different story of their involvement until the police coalesced them into one narrative. It’s was disturbing and frightening to read (two of the suspects kept a prison journal that provide a kind of log to the daily disintegration of their minds) the fragility of the brain and how quickly under stress it can produce false memory.
The police under enormous pressure to solve this case resorted to several glaring examples of misconduct (in one case a plaster bust was made of a “person of interest” in the case for the public. It was later discovered the police provided the sculptor with a photo of the person they wanted.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this fascinating book however is its insights into Icelandic society. It was a country in the 1970’s where television was banned on Thursdays, the alcohol content of beer was not allowed to exceed 2.5% (a law that existed until the early 90’s), and a prison system so small that to this day the total number of inmates in a country of 300,000 people fluctuates around 150, many of whom are under house arrest until the space for a cell opens up.
In such a homogeneous country, perhaps it is no surprise that of the suspects, the one most reviled by the police, media, and public was a young man in a country where most male names end in -son and female names in -dottir, had a foreign sounding name, Saevar Ciesielski. His story was inextricably linked with a rapidly changing Iceland where hippies, drugs, new music, and an American military presence were making the Icelanders of their day uncomfortable. Cleansing society of Saevar was in many respects also metaphorical cleansing of a society unwilling to accept a changing world.
This is a short but fascinating book with multiple levels to it that I highly recommend for those interested in true crime, the limits of human memory, or how societies adapt (or don’t) to rapid change.
It is also the story of the limits of human memory and how susceptible it is to coercion and suggestion.
When the police eventually settled on a group of suspects in their early 20’s, they all were adamant that they had nothing to do with the crime. As time passed and they spent increasing long hours in isolation (one suspect spent well over 600 days in isolation before finally “confessing”) and under duress from constant interrogation, the suspects began to believe they were in fact guilty, each one construct a different story of their involvement until the police coalesced them into one narrative. It’s was disturbing and frightening to read (two of the suspects kept a prison journal that provide a kind of log to the daily disintegration of their minds) the fragility of the brain and how quickly under stress it can produce false memory.
The police under enormous pressure to solve this case resorted to several glaring examples of misconduct (in one case a plaster bust was made of a “person of interest” in the case for the public. It was later discovered the police provided the sculptor with a photo of the person they wanted.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this fascinating book however is its insights into Icelandic society. It was a country in the 1970’s where television was banned on Thursdays, the alcohol content of beer was not allowed to exceed 2.5% (a law that existed until the early 90’s), and a prison system so small that to this day the total number of inmates in a country of 300,000 people fluctuates around 150, many of whom are under house arrest until the space for a cell opens up.
In such a homogeneous country, perhaps it is no surprise that of the suspects, the one most reviled by the police, media, and public was a young man in a country where most male names end in -son and female names in -dottir, had a foreign sounding name, Saevar Ciesielski. His story was inextricably linked with a rapidly changing Iceland where hippies, drugs, new music, and an American military presence were making the Icelanders of their day uncomfortable. Cleansing society of Saevar was in many respects also metaphorical cleansing of a society unwilling to accept a changing world.
This is a short but fascinating book with multiple levels to it that I highly recommend for those interested in true crime, the limits of human memory, or how societies adapt (or don’t) to rapid change.
June 5, 2024
Universitet vaxtı ədalətsiz hökmün icrası ilə bağlı bir film izləmişdim. İllər ötüb amma o filmin təsiri məndə ilk günkü kimi qalıb. “The life of David Gale” ( David Geylin həyatı) filmini baxacaqlarınız filmlərin siyahısına əlavə etməyi tövsiyə edirəm. Peşman olmayacaqsız. Bu kitab da mənə müəyyən mənada elə həmin o filmi xatırlatdı.
İndi gələk kitaba.
“Out of thin air”. Hərfi tərcümə etsək “havadan”. İslandiya, 1974-cü il. İki ayrı insident fonunda iki müxtəlif şəxs itgin düşərək sanki bir vaxtlar heç mövcüd olmamış kimi hava`ya qarışıb görünməz olur. Elə burada qeyd edə bilərəm ki, kitabın adı çox uğurla secilib. Dilimizə isə kitab “Heç nədən” kimi tərcümə olunub. Qeyri-adi sujet xəttinə malik bu kitab Avropa tarixində ən ədalətsiz bir məhkəmə qərarı daha doğrusu səhvi ətrafında qurulub. Real hadisələrə əsalanan bu cinayət hekayəsi İslandiya tarixindəki ən qəribə qətl hadisəsini kimi yaddaşda qalıb.
1974-cü il itgin düşənlərin araşdırılması prosesindən sonra 6 nəfər şübhəli saxlanılır. Və həmin 6 nəfər də uzun dindirilmələrdən sonra günahkar olduqlarını etiraf edirlər. Bu hadisələrin sonu kimi görünə bilər ancaq ən maraqlısı da elə bundan sonra başlayır. Uzun ziddiyyətli prosesdən və hökm qərarından illər sonra bütün bu şəxslərin məhkəmə sisteminin qurbanı olduğu məlum olur. Günahlarını etiraf edənlərin günahsız olduğu və onların “yaddaş etibarsızlığı” sindromundan əziyyət çəkdiyi sübuta yetir. Kitab bütün mütaliə boyu məni intizarda saxlamağı bacarırdı. Hətta kitabın yarısından sonra özüm üçün yəqin etdiyim məlum son belə bu intizarın azalmasına qəti maneə olmadı.
kitabin sevdiyim tərəfləri: İslandiya tarixi və mədəniyyəti ilə əlaqədar o qədər yeni və maraqlı məlumatlar əldə etmiş oldum ki. Və bütün bu məlumatların sujet xətti ilə bağlanması işin ədəbi hissəsini çox keyfiyyətli edirdi. İslandiyanın nəfəskəsici gözəlliyi sözün hərfi mənasında “Out of thin Air”-in səhifələrindən üstümə tullanırdı. Bu ölkədə sirli və bir az sehrli nəsə vardı və kitab bunu əks etdirməyi bacarırdı.
Mənimçün maraqlı olan daha bir məqam isə, bu prosesdə iştirak edənlərin çoxu, o cümlədən mühakimə olunanlar hələ də İslandiyada yaşadıqlarını öyrənməyim oldu. Onlar qırx ildən çox əvvəl baş vermiş bu hadisələrin kölgəsində yaşamalı və həyatlarına qaldığı yerdən davam etməli idilər...
İndi gələk kitaba.
“Out of thin air”. Hərfi tərcümə etsək “havadan”. İslandiya, 1974-cü il. İki ayrı insident fonunda iki müxtəlif şəxs itgin düşərək sanki bir vaxtlar heç mövcüd olmamış kimi hava`ya qarışıb görünməz olur. Elə burada qeyd edə bilərəm ki, kitabın adı çox uğurla secilib. Dilimizə isə kitab “Heç nədən” kimi tərcümə olunub. Qeyri-adi sujet xəttinə malik bu kitab Avropa tarixində ən ədalətsiz bir məhkəmə qərarı daha doğrusu səhvi ətrafında qurulub. Real hadisələrə əsalanan bu cinayət hekayəsi İslandiya tarixindəki ən qəribə qətl hadisəsini kimi yaddaşda qalıb.
1974-cü il itgin düşənlərin araşdırılması prosesindən sonra 6 nəfər şübhəli saxlanılır. Və həmin 6 nəfər də uzun dindirilmələrdən sonra günahkar olduqlarını etiraf edirlər. Bu hadisələrin sonu kimi görünə bilər ancaq ən maraqlısı da elə bundan sonra başlayır. Uzun ziddiyyətli prosesdən və hökm qərarından illər sonra bütün bu şəxslərin məhkəmə sisteminin qurbanı olduğu məlum olur. Günahlarını etiraf edənlərin günahsız olduğu və onların “yaddaş etibarsızlığı” sindromundan əziyyət çəkdiyi sübuta yetir. Kitab bütün mütaliə boyu məni intizarda saxlamağı bacarırdı. Hətta kitabın yarısından sonra özüm üçün yəqin etdiyim məlum son belə bu intizarın azalmasına qəti maneə olmadı.
kitabin sevdiyim tərəfləri: İslandiya tarixi və mədəniyyəti ilə əlaqədar o qədər yeni və maraqlı məlumatlar əldə etmiş oldum ki. Və bütün bu məlumatların sujet xətti ilə bağlanması işin ədəbi hissəsini çox keyfiyyətli edirdi. İslandiyanın nəfəskəsici gözəlliyi sözün hərfi mənasında “Out of thin Air”-in səhifələrindən üstümə tullanırdı. Bu ölkədə sirli və bir az sehrli nəsə vardı və kitab bunu əks etdirməyi bacarırdı.
Mənimçün maraqlı olan daha bir məqam isə, bu prosesdə iştirak edənlərin çoxu, o cümlədən mühakimə olunanlar hələ də İslandiyada yaşadıqlarını öyrənməyim oldu. Onlar qırx ildən çox əvvəl baş vermiş bu hadisələrin kölgəsində yaşamalı və həyatlarına qaldığı yerdən davam etməli idilər...
January 10, 2019
This should have been two different books- one on economic history of Iceland, the other on the mystery of a missing person. Both combined, it is an incoherent mess.
Frankly, the material on the main theme (mystery and wrongful convictions) itself is thin and not-extraordinary. The wikipedia article on the trials is a much better read since it is succinct. The book rambles on and on about how Iceland evolved economically before the murder, how it was evolving during the trial and how it evolved later and frankly it is all unnecessary and unrelated. I found myself skipping the pages.
Frankly, the material on the main theme (mystery and wrongful convictions) itself is thin and not-extraordinary. The wikipedia article on the trials is a much better read since it is succinct. The book rambles on and on about how Iceland evolved economically before the murder, how it was evolving during the trial and how it evolved later and frankly it is all unnecessary and unrelated. I found myself skipping the pages.
August 15, 2018
One cold January night in 1974 a young man leaves a nightclub and is never seen again. Months later another man receives a telephone call late at night and leaves his home. He too never returns. One murder in Iceland is unexpected, two in short succession almost unheard of. Police are quick to arrest suspects. Confessions are obtained and convictions followed. But those confessions may not have been as they seem.
I’ve been lucky enough to visit Iceland. It is a wonderful country, with a close-knit feel. There is beauty in its stark landscape and a wonderful sense of history permeates it. This essence of Iceland leaps from the pages of Out of Thin Air. There is something mysterious and slightly magical about the country and the book echoes that. (It was also great to read a book where I recognise the places and have actually been to them).
As well as being a fascinating look into Icelandic life, Out of Thin Air is a study in how criminal investigations shouldn’t take place. Forty something years ago investigative methods were different to today’s policing. Unfortunately violence was rife, as was the use of more persuasive tactics to elicit confessions. Add into the mix a police force unused to dealing with major investigations such as murder and it was a recipe for disaster.
Many of those who were involved in the case, including those convicted, remain in Iceland. They have had to live under the shadows of events from over forty years ago, each one dealing with it in their own way. I found myself searching the internet for more information on the six suspects. It was truly fascinating to read about what they went through, and how they dealt with the fallout of the case. The book looks into investigative methods, of both the Icelandic police and the German investigator sent to assist. It is a study in detection at the time, and the limits placed by lack of experience. It is also a study in the phenomenon of false confessions, of suggested memory and the effect that solitary confinement can have on the human mind.
The book reads very much like a documentary, which is apt given the author, Anthony Adeane was researching the case for a documentary. Interviews with those involved form the bedrock of the book, bringing the cases even more to life. As with most non-fiction crime books there is a sense of unease in that the complete truth will never be fully known. But such is life.
It’s hard to not go into too much detail without giving anything away, so I will leave it there.
The cases of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur still causes much discussion in Iceland today. And it’s easy to see why. A fascinating look into a dark part of the country where the Northern Lights shine.
I’ve been lucky enough to visit Iceland. It is a wonderful country, with a close-knit feel. There is beauty in its stark landscape and a wonderful sense of history permeates it. This essence of Iceland leaps from the pages of Out of Thin Air. There is something mysterious and slightly magical about the country and the book echoes that. (It was also great to read a book where I recognise the places and have actually been to them).
As well as being a fascinating look into Icelandic life, Out of Thin Air is a study in how criminal investigations shouldn’t take place. Forty something years ago investigative methods were different to today’s policing. Unfortunately violence was rife, as was the use of more persuasive tactics to elicit confessions. Add into the mix a police force unused to dealing with major investigations such as murder and it was a recipe for disaster.
Many of those who were involved in the case, including those convicted, remain in Iceland. They have had to live under the shadows of events from over forty years ago, each one dealing with it in their own way. I found myself searching the internet for more information on the six suspects. It was truly fascinating to read about what they went through, and how they dealt with the fallout of the case. The book looks into investigative methods, of both the Icelandic police and the German investigator sent to assist. It is a study in detection at the time, and the limits placed by lack of experience. It is also a study in the phenomenon of false confessions, of suggested memory and the effect that solitary confinement can have on the human mind.
The book reads very much like a documentary, which is apt given the author, Anthony Adeane was researching the case for a documentary. Interviews with those involved form the bedrock of the book, bringing the cases even more to life. As with most non-fiction crime books there is a sense of unease in that the complete truth will never be fully known. But such is life.
It’s hard to not go into too much detail without giving anything away, so I will leave it there.
The cases of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur still causes much discussion in Iceland today. And it’s easy to see why. A fascinating look into a dark part of the country where the Northern Lights shine.
August 10, 2018
I read this book because I’m participating both in Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge (read a book of true crime) and the ATW80 challenge to read a book set in each country of the world. I did not anticipate that this would be a five star read for me but it was wonderful! Adeane discusses the - still unsolved - mystery of two men who went missing in 1974 in Iceland as well as telling us a lot about the recent history of the country. I learnt a lot about why people might confess to crimes of which they may not be guilty; the unreliability of human memory; and the influence of “confessions” on our perceptions of criminal cases. I also learnt about the “globalization” of Icelandic society; the growth of the Icelandic media; and the country’s 2008 banking crisis. The author also throws in references to elves, volcanoes, the growth in tourism, and Bjork! Somehow, it just works!
March 16, 2023
In the winter of 1974, in two unrelated incidents, two men disappeared in Iceland. What followed is a barely believable tale of judicial and governmental ineptitude and dysfunction that led to the lives of six young people being comprehensively wrecked and a further four men, owners of a Reykjavik nightclub, having their names dragged through the press as likely conspirators to murder. The case continues to haunt the Icelandic conscience almost half a century on, as Anthony Adeane discovers as he pieces together how this monumental miscarriage of justice came to happen. Despite the bodies of the missing men never having been found, and in the absence of any physical evidence or reliable eyewitness accounts, the inexperienced and immature Icelandic police, prison and judicial system of the time relied solely on confessions extracted from confused young people, kept in solitary confinement for months on end, and with barely any access to lawyers. It’s a tragic and confusing tale and a salutary lesson in what can go wrong when due process is absent from criminal investigations. Adeane does a good job at untangling the knots and tracking down many of the key players; of equal interest to the dreadful story he has to tell is the picture he paints of a newly independent nation with a small and interrelated population and a very low crime rate struggling to deal with ‘crimes’ that threatened to undermine the country’s new and fragile sense of self-identity.
October 26, 2024
Çoxdandır sənədli ədəbiyyat oxumurdum. Bu kitab klubun aylıq mütaliəsinə seçilməsəydi, bu "çoxdandır" daha da uzana bilərdi.
Əslində bu sayaq sənəndli temalar xoşum gəlir, sənədli filmlərə baxmaqdan zövq alıram, xüsusilə də ssenarinin gedişatını izləmək və tamaşaçını maraqda saxlamağın yollarını təsbit etməkdən həzz alıram.
Düzü kitab sahəsinin az inkişaf etdiyi bir ölkədə belə bir kitabı tərcümə etməyin altında yatan səbəblər mənə maraqlıdır. Buna baxmayaraq, məncə, ciddi səbəb axtarmaq bihudədir.
Lakin, kitab elə məhz bizim ölkə üçün, düşünürəm ki, aktual olan məsələdən bəhs edir.
Fikirləşirdim ki, kitabın sonunda, dəhşətə gələcəm, amma işıqlar yanmadı, qaranlıq aydınlanmadı.
Kitabın ən maraqlı gələn hissəsi heqomon dövlətlərin heqemon mədəniyyətlərinin kiçik mədəniyyətləri sıxışdırıb sıradan çıxarmasından bəhs edən fəsil idi. Qərb çox uzaqda olsa da, kim dana bilər ki, biz qərbli deyilik. Kim dana bilər ki, İslandiya mədəniyyəti adlı bir mədəniyyət, artıq arxivə qaldırılıb.
Əslində bu sayaq sənəndli temalar xoşum gəlir, sənədli filmlərə baxmaqdan zövq alıram, xüsusilə də ssenarinin gedişatını izləmək və tamaşaçını maraqda saxlamağın yollarını təsbit etməkdən həzz alıram.
Düzü kitab sahəsinin az inkişaf etdiyi bir ölkədə belə bir kitabı tərcümə etməyin altında yatan səbəblər mənə maraqlıdır. Buna baxmayaraq, məncə, ciddi səbəb axtarmaq bihudədir.
Lakin, kitab elə məhz bizim ölkə üçün, düşünürəm ki, aktual olan məsələdən bəhs edir.
Fikirləşirdim ki, kitabın sonunda, dəhşətə gələcəm, amma işıqlar yanmadı, qaranlıq aydınlanmadı.
Kitabın ən maraqlı gələn hissəsi heqomon dövlətlərin heqemon mədəniyyətlərinin kiçik mədəniyyətləri sıxışdırıb sıradan çıxarmasından bəhs edən fəsil idi. Qərb çox uzaqda olsa da, kim dana bilər ki, biz qərbli deyilik. Kim dana bilər ki, İslandiya mədəniyyəti adlı bir mədəniyyət, artıq arxivə qaldırılıb.
October 29, 2024
3.5/5.0
Bilmirəm gülüm ya ağlayım.
1970-lərdə itkin düşən iki nəfərin cinayətə qurban getdiyini iddia edən island hökumətinin günahlandırdığı insanların taleyini qələmə alan jurnalistin publisist araşdırması.
Mənə ən çox maraqlı gələn İslandiya tarixi, siyasi və sosial mühiti haqqında öyrənmək oldu. Bu təcrid adanın keçdiyi yollar bizə uzaq olsa da, imperializmin təsirləri indi öz gücünü göstərir.
Bu itkin araşdırmasına gəlincə, xatirələrin və insan yaddaşının oyunları, göstərilən təzyiqlər və naşılığın neçə həyatı dəyişə biləcəyinə şahid oluruq, bəziləri yaman tanış gəldi. Azərbaycan və İslandiya hüquq sistemi arasında nə qədər oxşarlıq ola bilər ki? Buyurub oxuyub agah ola bilərsiniz.
Bilmirəm gülüm ya ağlayım.
1970-lərdə itkin düşən iki nəfərin cinayətə qurban getdiyini iddia edən island hökumətinin günahlandırdığı insanların taleyini qələmə alan jurnalistin publisist araşdırması.
Mənə ən çox maraqlı gələn İslandiya tarixi, siyasi və sosial mühiti haqqında öyrənmək oldu. Bu təcrid adanın keçdiyi yollar bizə uzaq olsa da, imperializmin təsirləri indi öz gücünü göstərir.
Bu itkin araşdırmasına gəlincə, xatirələrin və insan yaddaşının oyunları, göstərilən təzyiqlər və naşılığın neçə həyatı dəyişə biləcəyinə şahid oluruq, bəziləri yaman tanış gəldi. Azərbaycan və İslandiya hüquq sistemi arasında nə qədər oxşarlıq ola bilər ki? Buyurub oxuyub agah ola bilərsiniz.
December 21, 2020
Parecía interesante pero se queda en la vida en Islandia, sus costumbres, etc y poco de la parte del crimen.
July 2, 2018
Redelijk goed 3,5*
July 1, 2018
Not sure who recommended this book or how I ended up picking it up but it was long, drawn out, and not terribly interesting. Kept waiting for some major revelation but there was none.
March 22, 2019
Poco de true crime y mucho de sociedad y cultura islandesa. Interesante, pero no es lo que esperaba.
January 13, 2020
Very interesting non-fiction book about a famous case in Iceland where a group of people wrongly accused of two crimes confessed to them and spent many years in jail, only tk be cleared decades later. It is well written, and besides the case itself it also provides a vivid and insightful account of Icelandic society and how it changed in the last few decades. The phenomenon of "memory distrust syndrome" is fascinating and quite scary, and this book provides some insight into how it can occur. A good read not only for true crime fans, but also for people interested in human psychology or in Iceland.
November 11, 2020
Muy buen libro sobre la historia de dos asesinatos sin resolver en Islandia, todo son calumnias y rumores, coacciones y presiones. La memoria es caprichosa, no te fíes, ya que no la controlas.
Libro complicado para quien no le encante Islandia o el crimen de verdad, ya que tiene gran dosis de historia y biografía.
El documental es una pasada, muy recomendable. Mejor que el libro incluso.
Libro complicado para quien no le encante Islandia o el crimen de verdad, ya que tiene gran dosis de historia y biografía.
El documental es una pasada, muy recomendable. Mejor que el libro incluso.
March 22, 2019
Poco de true crime y mucho de sociedad y cultura islandesa. Interesante, pero no es lo que esperaba.
April 13, 2018
A solid true crime book that doubles as a short history of Iceland. The interaction of changing attitudes and thinking of Icelandic society with the progress of an insolvable case is attempted, although wrapping that up with effect of memory issues, poor policing and political motivations makes for a somewhat confusing narrative. The cases become secondary to the author's view of Icelandic society, and throwing in a silver bullet at the end feel awkward. Interesting but not memorable.
January 12, 2019
Probably the worst book I've ever read. Dry and boring.
July 28, 2018
Iceland went, in less than a century, from the situation of an island colony in the North Atlantic to the situation of a modern island attracting not only tourists in huge numbers (tourism today represents 1/3rd of the national income) but also the interest of "world powers" who discovered between 1939 and 1949 that it represented a major geopolitical goal given its geographical situation. Extremely poor for a long time and having to count on fishing in frigid waters as its main resource, it is also an amazing island where the whole town of Reykjavik as well as huge greenhouses are fed by natural heating, where tradition has led to one of the richest literary heritages in Europe, despite the fact Icelandic language is not an easy Scandinavian language. It is a friendly - but expensive - island where you will enjoy socializing by soaking in huge, warm communal baths and discover landscapes that evoke Mars more than this planet, and where trolls are considered real without a shadow of a doubt. It was the starting point of some Vikings' arrival on North American shores way before the Basques, the Portuguese, the Spanish, French, English, Dutch.... It has been the site of one of the oldest Parliaments in European history, only gaining its independence, however, in the 20th century, after having been a colony of several continental Scandinavian kingdoms.
Ireland today has more than 300,000 inhabitants, and most tourists, however much they realize than on an island you will only find what you bring there, will not notice any difference compared to neighboring lands, whether you come from Scotland or from Nova Scotia. You will in many places find workers who have come from other parts of the European Union or even other parts of the world. In the 1970s, the island had about 200,000 inhabitants, and few "foreigners" had reached shores where most people were, in some way, related or part of a limited group of settlers, linked by their language and community history. At the same time, this tight-knit, unique identity had produced at least one major world writer, Nobel prize winner Haldor Laxness - one of whose novels, surprisingly, is already the story of a man who may or may not have committed a murder.
Some may criticize Adeane for spending a fair amount of time dealing with descriptions of Icelandinc landscapes and giving us details on the history of Iceland. I do not: after all, he limits what he says to what is important in relation to the "crime story" he is looking into, and does not narrate the entire Icelandic sagas for the fun of it. When he has one of the real-life characters shipped to Akureiri, the Nordic city, he does not tell us the story of the town. History, however, is essential, and not only because we need to understand the mindset of 1970s Icelanders, but because we have to realize the story told here has, quite possibly, a lot to do with things that happened in other parts of the world under the auspices of the US empire and its attempt at ruling the world.
This is a book you read and the re-read, slowly. You're surprised: after all it seems to be devoted to the story of two people who disappeared, one probably swept up drunk in a blizzard during a dark night close to a freezing ocean, the other one in the small town of Keflavik, quite possibly drowned in the same ocean and pulled far away by currents. Keflavik today is well-know to Transatlantic travellers, since it is the site of the airport, where Icelandair rules. At the time, and even though in the 1970s air travel has begun to replace sea voyages as the best way to go from one place to another, Keflavik and Reykjavik are much smaller, and how can police not find bodies and criminals on an island? Anyone who has driven from Keflavik to Reykjavik and around Iceland can easily answer that this place, from its lava fields to its wild areas, gives potential criminals and potentially lost souls all the space needed to just disappear. So the question several books have asked - in English - about this case comes back to: why did the police decide that, in two disappearances one year apart, there was enough "evidence" to support murder charges against not 1, not 2, but 6 and possibly more individuals? why, when it became obvious after a few years that there was, quite simply, no evidence - no bodies, no material traces, no convincing witnesses...in other words, nothing. If this was the story of Gudmundur and Geirfinnur, the two missing persons, their case would be closed in less than a chapbook.
Enter, among others, a German spy or counter-spy who gets recruited to pull the strings of a supposed murder enquiry after, curiously, a meeting between US president Gerald Ford, Iceland police reps, and the West German government. It may not startle you when you read the first time through the book, but then it nags at you: while there is little doubt the small Reykyavik police has not had too much to do with murders and has lagged behind in a number of modern forensic developments, it also seems likely that some crime scene investigators from Britain or from Canada would be much more appropriate than a right-wing counter-spy with virtually zero experience in murder investigations and - to boot - no knowledge of Icelandic or of Icelandic people (one of suspects calling him "the Nazi" seems more than appropriate).
There is a good reason he's there, though. In the 1940s, the US (and its British allies) has understood how important this island, with its sheep and its volcanoes, might be in the world conflict coming up. US bases will develop from there, being a mixed blessing here as everywhere in Europe after 1945: employment and financing will grow around the bases and because of them, but increased problems will develop because of the difference between US "culture" and the different local one. I do not like General Charles de Gaulle, but he decided wisely when he kicked US bases out of France. Many in Iceland - starting with Haldor Laxness - were not strong supporters of a continuing US presence, however much it brought "urban modernity" to a somewhat "provincial" island. What Adeane's book is telling us, as a spectral analysis of an incredible case of forced confessions, but also of somewhat forced international presence, is that unsavory things may have happened because of that presence. He never declares it formally, but we have an increasing feeling, as we read, and as we connect with other readings about that time, that what he really wants to say is that possibly, quite possibly, Iceland was used as part of one of those many more or less illegal projects from the CIA that have been known collectively as MK-Ultra. In other words, why would it be impossible to not do in Iceland, a highly controlled environment by its very insular nature, what was done at the same time in various forms in Canada, in France, and probably in many other places?
MK-Ultra has basically two goals: one was to try and "subvert" potential Soviet spies, the other one to test how you could bend and control minds - and particularly young, unsuspecting, vulnerable minds. MK-Ultra would use drugs, sleep deprivation, basic forms of torture (usually in out-of-the-way orphanages or other institutions where more or less deficient kids would find themselves enslaved by trauma bonding if they were bright enough to realize it), relentless verbal threats, and so on. Curiously, Reykjavik police would use exactly the same tactics to break a bunch of young, vulnerable people whose main crime was to use drugs (some of them brought illegally into a country where even drinking strong beer was an offense at the time) and try to play Bonnie and Clyde to the embezzle funds (with zero hope of not being discovered, since on an island you're kind of trapped). The London-based forensic psychologist of Icelandic origin who followed the case over the years and finally supported a judicial review testifies that he has never seen people who had to be in solitary that long. Is he naive or playing dumb? Obviously there were reasons for keeping these young individuals in similar conditions, but they had nothing to do with an investigation that was based on nothing. It had to do with, obviously, some form of psychological testing. It worked: from the girl who betrayed her boyfriend (adding guilt to the psychological mix) to those who invented all the material elements of a crime they could not have committed, the manipulators could not have dreamt a better experiment. They also tested the ability of the political powers to successfully challenge a judicial monstrosity: if needed be, it was proven that grand speeches by politicians, even in high positions, achieved...nothing. It took forty years to finally get the Icelandic judicial system to admit the obvious: no bodies, false and planted suggestions, torture-like interrogations, no material data, amounted to ...no case. Forty years. Not lost for everyone: it was, for those who conceived and engineered the whole thing, a fabulously successful experiment. At all levels.
Adeane, at one point, suggests that this may have been the case - a government-led manipulation - but shies away in horror from the notion. He points out, however, that we find similarities here with cases in other parts of the world. We have the Christian orphanage where kids were subjected to continuous abuse. The Breidavik kids are the brothers in pain of Duplessis's orphans in Quebec and the boys and girls cared for by Dr. Cameron at the Dorea institute on the US-Quebec border, and many more. Few survived sane. But it gets better. A conservative judicial and police force will quite easily consider that young people guilty of using drugs, committing petty crimes, and listening to rock music, are far from the choirboys they would love young people to be. in other words, considering the 1970s, it was quickly considered that the little group of young people accused of nonexistent crimes were nothing less than the Icelandic version of the Manson family.
The link here gets even more interesting, since several studies have very seriously considered the "Family" to have been part of an organized attack on the values espoused by the 1970s youth movements. In other words, the scapegoats of chaos were to be used as proof that any values considered modern or "hip" were wrong and had to be controlled. From there to a concerted attack on more "leftist" or "liberal" views, there was not much of a gap to go across. After all, even in Canada, it took the 1990s to finally remove from the government boards a secret provision that planned to send all "communists" and related thinkers to concentration camps in case of a national emergency. Given the way Quebec premier Duplessis defined "communist", it meant that basicallt anyone looking like former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, or his son Justin, the current Prime Minister, would have ended in the slammer. Probably starved from sleep and brought to write long confessions to lots of dreamlike "crimes" after a little while.
Adeane's book is not "new" when we consider that the "Gudmundur and Geirfinnur" case is well-known in Iceland, having kept people on their toes for forty years (a decision to reject the sentences for murder was finally made this year, although it does not suppress some other sentences that occurred in connection with those). In a closed, small society, it is not only important for the supposedly "guilty" to be cleared of wrongdoing, it is extremely important for their children and grandchildren to be. Even though, it could be argued, Vikings arrived in Groenland, and then in Newfoundland, because of a murder and the need for the murderer to move out of Iceland for a little while...
Other books have been written about this, offering in one case many more documents, visual and written. Before "The Reykjavik Confessions" by Simon Cox there had been "Sugar-Paper Theories" by Jack Latham. After some BBC movies, an Icelandic one by Egill Egilsson is slated to be shown in 2019. We may wonder, though, why this sudden surge of interest in a nonexistent crime case. The answer lies in the subtext of all those. At a time when a new type of "Cold War", the shape of which is yet unclear, is obviously heating up as the Star-Wars like US empire is on the wane, we fear more than ever that fascist-like parties may get in power, or use military force, to manipulate and manage opinions, individual judgement, and socio-political relationships. Iceland may not see tomorrow delegates send by Goering exploring its wildest recesses like the 1930s (that type of nazism is hopefully gone for good) but it has to play with influences from China, and a Nordic situation with others including Russia, Canada and the USA to share the Arctic Circle, as well as the question of knowing how to relate to an increasingly right-wing US view, and not only to host meetings of Reagan and Gorbatchov, or chess games between Fisher and Spassky, which turns out to be more or less the same after all.
This makes this book valuable. If we were dealing simply with a blabbering girlfriend spilling her imaginary guts against her slightly criminal - and slightly "foreign" - boyfriend, we'd be much better off reading one of the remarkable crime novels by master Arnaldur indriðason. We're not dealing simply with that. We may never be sure what we're dealing with, since after all the archives of MK-Ultra were destroyed by the CIA except for a few rescued documents (enough to make us shiver), but we know the agency has never shied away from interrogating people in prisons on EU territory that did not have to follow US judicial standards, and those prisons probably looked very much like the now destroyed establishment where you could keep someone in solitary for nearly as long as the longest prisoner at Guantanamo. The empire does not like unstable situations where it considers it has a right to establish itself.
In a sense, Iceland, haven today for many North American and European tourists, land of sheep, wool and volcanoes, of bananas grown in greenhouses, land where the traditional meals include shark rotten from a trusted recipe and sheep's head, land of magic when I read the novels by French writer Pierre Loti who is now remembered in a fjord and in a Reykjavik cemetery, land where a stone in front of Parliament officially recognizes the fundamental right to dissent, land which fought banks in its bankruptcy after going through unbridled foreign capitalism, Iceland offers us through this story a warning for the future and a look at how dangerous some practices in manipulating minds and implanting narratives in people have become.
You think I'm into conspiracy theories, kind of paranoid? Well, maybe you should,m after reading this, read a little on MK-Ultra, and read with an open mind The Shadow over Santa Susana, n which Adam Gorightly revisits the "Manson case". It might change your mind about all this...but remember: whatever we read in English or French is, unfortunately, a translation from that unique and complex language, Icelandic, that provided world literature with one of its most important traditions.
Ireland today has more than 300,000 inhabitants, and most tourists, however much they realize than on an island you will only find what you bring there, will not notice any difference compared to neighboring lands, whether you come from Scotland or from Nova Scotia. You will in many places find workers who have come from other parts of the European Union or even other parts of the world. In the 1970s, the island had about 200,000 inhabitants, and few "foreigners" had reached shores where most people were, in some way, related or part of a limited group of settlers, linked by their language and community history. At the same time, this tight-knit, unique identity had produced at least one major world writer, Nobel prize winner Haldor Laxness - one of whose novels, surprisingly, is already the story of a man who may or may not have committed a murder.
Some may criticize Adeane for spending a fair amount of time dealing with descriptions of Icelandinc landscapes and giving us details on the history of Iceland. I do not: after all, he limits what he says to what is important in relation to the "crime story" he is looking into, and does not narrate the entire Icelandic sagas for the fun of it. When he has one of the real-life characters shipped to Akureiri, the Nordic city, he does not tell us the story of the town. History, however, is essential, and not only because we need to understand the mindset of 1970s Icelanders, but because we have to realize the story told here has, quite possibly, a lot to do with things that happened in other parts of the world under the auspices of the US empire and its attempt at ruling the world.
This is a book you read and the re-read, slowly. You're surprised: after all it seems to be devoted to the story of two people who disappeared, one probably swept up drunk in a blizzard during a dark night close to a freezing ocean, the other one in the small town of Keflavik, quite possibly drowned in the same ocean and pulled far away by currents. Keflavik today is well-know to Transatlantic travellers, since it is the site of the airport, where Icelandair rules. At the time, and even though in the 1970s air travel has begun to replace sea voyages as the best way to go from one place to another, Keflavik and Reykjavik are much smaller, and how can police not find bodies and criminals on an island? Anyone who has driven from Keflavik to Reykjavik and around Iceland can easily answer that this place, from its lava fields to its wild areas, gives potential criminals and potentially lost souls all the space needed to just disappear. So the question several books have asked - in English - about this case comes back to: why did the police decide that, in two disappearances one year apart, there was enough "evidence" to support murder charges against not 1, not 2, but 6 and possibly more individuals? why, when it became obvious after a few years that there was, quite simply, no evidence - no bodies, no material traces, no convincing witnesses...in other words, nothing. If this was the story of Gudmundur and Geirfinnur, the two missing persons, their case would be closed in less than a chapbook.
Enter, among others, a German spy or counter-spy who gets recruited to pull the strings of a supposed murder enquiry after, curiously, a meeting between US president Gerald Ford, Iceland police reps, and the West German government. It may not startle you when you read the first time through the book, but then it nags at you: while there is little doubt the small Reykyavik police has not had too much to do with murders and has lagged behind in a number of modern forensic developments, it also seems likely that some crime scene investigators from Britain or from Canada would be much more appropriate than a right-wing counter-spy with virtually zero experience in murder investigations and - to boot - no knowledge of Icelandic or of Icelandic people (one of suspects calling him "the Nazi" seems more than appropriate).
There is a good reason he's there, though. In the 1940s, the US (and its British allies) has understood how important this island, with its sheep and its volcanoes, might be in the world conflict coming up. US bases will develop from there, being a mixed blessing here as everywhere in Europe after 1945: employment and financing will grow around the bases and because of them, but increased problems will develop because of the difference between US "culture" and the different local one. I do not like General Charles de Gaulle, but he decided wisely when he kicked US bases out of France. Many in Iceland - starting with Haldor Laxness - were not strong supporters of a continuing US presence, however much it brought "urban modernity" to a somewhat "provincial" island. What Adeane's book is telling us, as a spectral analysis of an incredible case of forced confessions, but also of somewhat forced international presence, is that unsavory things may have happened because of that presence. He never declares it formally, but we have an increasing feeling, as we read, and as we connect with other readings about that time, that what he really wants to say is that possibly, quite possibly, Iceland was used as part of one of those many more or less illegal projects from the CIA that have been known collectively as MK-Ultra. In other words, why would it be impossible to not do in Iceland, a highly controlled environment by its very insular nature, what was done at the same time in various forms in Canada, in France, and probably in many other places?
MK-Ultra has basically two goals: one was to try and "subvert" potential Soviet spies, the other one to test how you could bend and control minds - and particularly young, unsuspecting, vulnerable minds. MK-Ultra would use drugs, sleep deprivation, basic forms of torture (usually in out-of-the-way orphanages or other institutions where more or less deficient kids would find themselves enslaved by trauma bonding if they were bright enough to realize it), relentless verbal threats, and so on. Curiously, Reykjavik police would use exactly the same tactics to break a bunch of young, vulnerable people whose main crime was to use drugs (some of them brought illegally into a country where even drinking strong beer was an offense at the time) and try to play Bonnie and Clyde to the embezzle funds (with zero hope of not being discovered, since on an island you're kind of trapped). The London-based forensic psychologist of Icelandic origin who followed the case over the years and finally supported a judicial review testifies that he has never seen people who had to be in solitary that long. Is he naive or playing dumb? Obviously there were reasons for keeping these young individuals in similar conditions, but they had nothing to do with an investigation that was based on nothing. It had to do with, obviously, some form of psychological testing. It worked: from the girl who betrayed her boyfriend (adding guilt to the psychological mix) to those who invented all the material elements of a crime they could not have committed, the manipulators could not have dreamt a better experiment. They also tested the ability of the political powers to successfully challenge a judicial monstrosity: if needed be, it was proven that grand speeches by politicians, even in high positions, achieved...nothing. It took forty years to finally get the Icelandic judicial system to admit the obvious: no bodies, false and planted suggestions, torture-like interrogations, no material data, amounted to ...no case. Forty years. Not lost for everyone: it was, for those who conceived and engineered the whole thing, a fabulously successful experiment. At all levels.
Adeane, at one point, suggests that this may have been the case - a government-led manipulation - but shies away in horror from the notion. He points out, however, that we find similarities here with cases in other parts of the world. We have the Christian orphanage where kids were subjected to continuous abuse. The Breidavik kids are the brothers in pain of Duplessis's orphans in Quebec and the boys and girls cared for by Dr. Cameron at the Dorea institute on the US-Quebec border, and many more. Few survived sane. But it gets better. A conservative judicial and police force will quite easily consider that young people guilty of using drugs, committing petty crimes, and listening to rock music, are far from the choirboys they would love young people to be. in other words, considering the 1970s, it was quickly considered that the little group of young people accused of nonexistent crimes were nothing less than the Icelandic version of the Manson family.
The link here gets even more interesting, since several studies have very seriously considered the "Family" to have been part of an organized attack on the values espoused by the 1970s youth movements. In other words, the scapegoats of chaos were to be used as proof that any values considered modern or "hip" were wrong and had to be controlled. From there to a concerted attack on more "leftist" or "liberal" views, there was not much of a gap to go across. After all, even in Canada, it took the 1990s to finally remove from the government boards a secret provision that planned to send all "communists" and related thinkers to concentration camps in case of a national emergency. Given the way Quebec premier Duplessis defined "communist", it meant that basicallt anyone looking like former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, or his son Justin, the current Prime Minister, would have ended in the slammer. Probably starved from sleep and brought to write long confessions to lots of dreamlike "crimes" after a little while.
Adeane's book is not "new" when we consider that the "Gudmundur and Geirfinnur" case is well-known in Iceland, having kept people on their toes for forty years (a decision to reject the sentences for murder was finally made this year, although it does not suppress some other sentences that occurred in connection with those). In a closed, small society, it is not only important for the supposedly "guilty" to be cleared of wrongdoing, it is extremely important for their children and grandchildren to be. Even though, it could be argued, Vikings arrived in Groenland, and then in Newfoundland, because of a murder and the need for the murderer to move out of Iceland for a little while...
Other books have been written about this, offering in one case many more documents, visual and written. Before "The Reykjavik Confessions" by Simon Cox there had been "Sugar-Paper Theories" by Jack Latham. After some BBC movies, an Icelandic one by Egill Egilsson is slated to be shown in 2019. We may wonder, though, why this sudden surge of interest in a nonexistent crime case. The answer lies in the subtext of all those. At a time when a new type of "Cold War", the shape of which is yet unclear, is obviously heating up as the Star-Wars like US empire is on the wane, we fear more than ever that fascist-like parties may get in power, or use military force, to manipulate and manage opinions, individual judgement, and socio-political relationships. Iceland may not see tomorrow delegates send by Goering exploring its wildest recesses like the 1930s (that type of nazism is hopefully gone for good) but it has to play with influences from China, and a Nordic situation with others including Russia, Canada and the USA to share the Arctic Circle, as well as the question of knowing how to relate to an increasingly right-wing US view, and not only to host meetings of Reagan and Gorbatchov, or chess games between Fisher and Spassky, which turns out to be more or less the same after all.
This makes this book valuable. If we were dealing simply with a blabbering girlfriend spilling her imaginary guts against her slightly criminal - and slightly "foreign" - boyfriend, we'd be much better off reading one of the remarkable crime novels by master Arnaldur indriðason. We're not dealing simply with that. We may never be sure what we're dealing with, since after all the archives of MK-Ultra were destroyed by the CIA except for a few rescued documents (enough to make us shiver), but we know the agency has never shied away from interrogating people in prisons on EU territory that did not have to follow US judicial standards, and those prisons probably looked very much like the now destroyed establishment where you could keep someone in solitary for nearly as long as the longest prisoner at Guantanamo. The empire does not like unstable situations where it considers it has a right to establish itself.
In a sense, Iceland, haven today for many North American and European tourists, land of sheep, wool and volcanoes, of bananas grown in greenhouses, land where the traditional meals include shark rotten from a trusted recipe and sheep's head, land of magic when I read the novels by French writer Pierre Loti who is now remembered in a fjord and in a Reykjavik cemetery, land where a stone in front of Parliament officially recognizes the fundamental right to dissent, land which fought banks in its bankruptcy after going through unbridled foreign capitalism, Iceland offers us through this story a warning for the future and a look at how dangerous some practices in manipulating minds and implanting narratives in people have become.
You think I'm into conspiracy theories, kind of paranoid? Well, maybe you should,m after reading this, read a little on MK-Ultra, and read with an open mind The Shadow over Santa Susana, n which Adam Gorightly revisits the "Manson case". It might change your mind about all this...but remember: whatever we read in English or French is, unfortunately, a translation from that unique and complex language, Icelandic, that provided world literature with one of its most important traditions.
April 18, 2019
What might have been a very good newspaper 'long read' is here stretched out to an entire book. The story of two unexplained deaths (strictly speaking, disappearances, as no bodies were ever recovered) in Iceland in the 1970s, and how six individuals came to be imprisoned for conspiracy to murder, it's certainly an intriguing tale, but I'm not sure there's enough to it to justify the near 300 page length of the book.
The author inevitably ends up padding out the book with some quite extensive sections on the wider cultural and social context in which all this plays out: Iceland and its journey over the last century or so from poor-ish backwater, to enormously wealthy financial player, to bankruptcy in the wake of the financial crash of the late noughties. Some of this is quite interesting background at least, if like me, you don't know a great deal about the country and the peculiarities of living in a country where the population is little larger than that of a medium-sized British city. I'm not convinced that any of this had a great deal to do with the story of the disappearance of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur, but it's interesting background colour and some of it does perhaps go a little way to explaining why the case captured the national imagination in the way that it appears to have done.
However, I felt that, given its length, there was something ultimately a little unsatisfying about this story
The author inevitably ends up padding out the book with some quite extensive sections on the wider cultural and social context in which all this plays out: Iceland and its journey over the last century or so from poor-ish backwater, to enormously wealthy financial player, to bankruptcy in the wake of the financial crash of the late noughties. Some of this is quite interesting background at least, if like me, you don't know a great deal about the country and the peculiarities of living in a country where the population is little larger than that of a medium-sized British city. I'm not convinced that any of this had a great deal to do with the story of the disappearance of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur, but it's interesting background colour and some of it does perhaps go a little way to explaining why the case captured the national imagination in the way that it appears to have done.
However, I felt that, given its length, there was something ultimately a little unsatisfying about this story
March 15, 2021
Very enjoyable if sad book. In addition to its focus on the nearly contemporaneous disappearances of two Icelanders in the early 1970s, and the related efforts to catch and convict the perpetrators, the book provides a bit of history of Iceland and its people and culture. There are also insights into Iceland's involvement in world affairs (WWII in particular), its elevation (and partial retreat) on the worlds' economic stage in the last 20 years, its recent rise in tourism (which in fact led me to discover this book, as my daughter went to Iceland pre-pandemic and recommended it), as well as interrogation techniques and false memories. Informative and compelling, the book gives you an idea of what the principal suspects and investigators went through, and how the case and its aftermath have impacted Icelandic life.
August 20, 2019
A compelling read. I really appreciated the fact that the book worked in some of Iceland’s history and culture as background info for the true crime plot. It was also eye opening to read about a country in which violence was so rare that two disappearances in the same year could cause such widespread panic.
December 25, 2024
Fantastic. I really enjoyed this book. It touches on many different topics while telling the story of the most infamous crime in Iceland. Learning about the country and its history as well as the psychological reasoning behind false confessions was incredibly interesting. Highly recommend this book.
June 27, 2019
this was apparently a very famous disappearance in Iceland. the investigation was botched because the cops had little experience with serious crime. But the story, though unsolved, isn't terribly interesting and there probably didn't need to be a long book about the case.
October 16, 2019
An interesting mix between the true crime case and the history of Iceland. Many parts are extremely intriguing - others however, a bit dull. Overall a good read for anyone interested in true crime and Iceland as a country.
April 26, 2022
There were certainly some parts that felt irrelevant, but overall the story was deeply fascinating.
April 14, 2024
Not a bad quick read and cool to learn more about a Iceland. However, the last third of the book was disappointing. Tell us who did it!!
September 7, 2021
Ever so redundant, yet a fascinating look into the perfect murders + a cartoonish police force, all amongst the backdrop of a wild and mystical (ice)land
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