Michael Ridpath's Blog
May 21, 2024
Gudrid and her husband discover America
In my last blog post, I described how Gudrid the Wanderer wandered from Iceland to Greenland. But she didn't stop there.
The two Vinland Sagas disagree on who first made landfall in North America, which became known as 'Vinland'. One saga says it was Bjarni Herjólfsson, who got lost on the way to Greenland, the other says it was Leif Eriksson, Erik the Red's son. These days Leif seems to get all the credit. Anyway, Leif, Thorfinn Karlsefni and Thorfinn's new wife Gudrid made a series of expeditions to Vinland, or Vínland in Old Norse, so called because of the discovery of grapes there.
The sagas describe the establishment in Vinland of temporary settlements at 'Leif's Booths' and 'Keel Point', as well as a tantalizing journey far to the south to a place called 'Hop', which is described in some detail.
There is much less archaeological evidence for a Viking presence in North America; indeed, until 1961 there was none. Despite the compelling descriptions in the sagas, many historians preferred to write them off as myth, ensuring that the credit for discovering America lay with the Genoese Christopher Columbus.
However, in 1961 a Norwegian couple, Anne and Helge Ingstad, discovered evidence of a Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Since then various other Viking artefacts have been found in Canada, especially to the north on Baffin Island and Ellesmere Island.
Actually, of course, America was discovered by some Siberians who wandered over what is now the Bering Straits about 20,000 years ago.
There remains the question of how far Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid travelled south, in other words, where this mysterious place Hop is. The Vikings stayed there for a couple of summers, before being driven out by the locals, or 'Skraelings' as the Norse called them.
There are clues about grapes, self-sown wheat, a river running north to south, and a lagoon right by the sea (hóp means 'tidal lagoon'). Candidate locations include the St Lawrence estuary, Buzzard's Bay near Cape Cod, Narragansett in Rhode Island and even Brooklyn. The truth is we don't know. That's the kind of gap in the historical record I love. It's crying out for a novel to fill it.
A quantity of spurious Viking remains have been found in the United States. Most are clearly fakes.
One of the most famous is the Kensington rune stone - Kensington is a small town in Minnesota - which was discovered by a Swedish farmer in 1898. This bore an inscription in runes saying the equivalent of '30 Vikings woz here 1362'. This seems an obvious fake - Minnesota is a long way from the Atlantic.
But much to my surprise, having read the evidence, I suspect that the stone may indeed be genuine, and that a Viking party travelled down from the Hudson Bay or along the Great Lakes water system to Minnesota. It is extraordinary how far Viking trading routes stretched: from Byzantium in the east, through Russia and the Baltic to Iceland and then on to Greenland and Vinland. We shouldn't underestimate the Norsemen's ability to cover large distances by sea, river and lake.
Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said: "The Icelanders are the most intelligent race on earth, because they discovered America and never told anyone."
Much of the scepticism of historians towards the idea that Icelanders discovered America comes from Italians or Italian Americans who are big fans of Columbus. They have a particular problem with a visit Columbus may or may not have made to Iceland in 1477, fifteen years before he set sail on the Santa María. The journey was reported by Columbus himself in his letter to Queen Isabella many years later, but he was frustratingly vague, talking about a land called 'Thile' and tides of extraordinary variation. But his account agrees with the stories of an Italian nobleman staying near Ólafsvík.
The claims by some historians that if Columbus did visit Iceland he would have been unlikely to hear of Vinland are laughable. I quote from an article in a learned historical journal I read in the British Library:
"There is no need to suggest that he [Columbus] learned of the medieval Greenland colony: Icelanders had lost interest in it after Norway took control of contacts with it . . . He is still less likely to have heard of the Vinland sagas, even if they had been retained in folk memory, which is very doubtful, or had been written down in unintelligible language between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries."
This is one of the all-time classic underestimations of Iceland. The fifteenth century was the greatest period when the sagas were copied. Iceland was full of priests who understood Latin. Icelanders had traded with Greenland in living memory; some had attended a wedding there seventy years before. If Columbus did visit Iceland in 1477, as he claimed he did, he would most certainly have heard about Vinland.
Plenty to get my teeth into. In September 2018, almost ten years after I had first heard of Gudrid and visited Ingjaldshóll where Columbus is rumoured to have stayed, The Wanderer was published.
The two Vinland Sagas disagree on who first made landfall in North America, which became known as 'Vinland'. One saga says it was Bjarni Herjólfsson, who got lost on the way to Greenland, the other says it was Leif Eriksson, Erik the Red's son. These days Leif seems to get all the credit. Anyway, Leif, Thorfinn Karlsefni and Thorfinn's new wife Gudrid made a series of expeditions to Vinland, or Vínland in Old Norse, so called because of the discovery of grapes there.
The sagas describe the establishment in Vinland of temporary settlements at 'Leif's Booths' and 'Keel Point', as well as a tantalizing journey far to the south to a place called 'Hop', which is described in some detail.
There is much less archaeological evidence for a Viking presence in North America; indeed, until 1961 there was none. Despite the compelling descriptions in the sagas, many historians preferred to write them off as myth, ensuring that the credit for discovering America lay with the Genoese Christopher Columbus.
However, in 1961 a Norwegian couple, Anne and Helge Ingstad, discovered evidence of a Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Since then various other Viking artefacts have been found in Canada, especially to the north on Baffin Island and Ellesmere Island.
Actually, of course, America was discovered by some Siberians who wandered over what is now the Bering Straits about 20,000 years ago.
There remains the question of how far Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid travelled south, in other words, where this mysterious place Hop is. The Vikings stayed there for a couple of summers, before being driven out by the locals, or 'Skraelings' as the Norse called them.
There are clues about grapes, self-sown wheat, a river running north to south, and a lagoon right by the sea (hóp means 'tidal lagoon'). Candidate locations include the St Lawrence estuary, Buzzard's Bay near Cape Cod, Narragansett in Rhode Island and even Brooklyn. The truth is we don't know. That's the kind of gap in the historical record I love. It's crying out for a novel to fill it.
A quantity of spurious Viking remains have been found in the United States. Most are clearly fakes.
One of the most famous is the Kensington rune stone - Kensington is a small town in Minnesota - which was discovered by a Swedish farmer in 1898. This bore an inscription in runes saying the equivalent of '30 Vikings woz here 1362'. This seems an obvious fake - Minnesota is a long way from the Atlantic.
But much to my surprise, having read the evidence, I suspect that the stone may indeed be genuine, and that a Viking party travelled down from the Hudson Bay or along the Great Lakes water system to Minnesota. It is extraordinary how far Viking trading routes stretched: from Byzantium in the east, through Russia and the Baltic to Iceland and then on to Greenland and Vinland. We shouldn't underestimate the Norsemen's ability to cover large distances by sea, river and lake.
Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said: "The Icelanders are the most intelligent race on earth, because they discovered America and never told anyone."
Much of the scepticism of historians towards the idea that Icelanders discovered America comes from Italians or Italian Americans who are big fans of Columbus. They have a particular problem with a visit Columbus may or may not have made to Iceland in 1477, fifteen years before he set sail on the Santa María. The journey was reported by Columbus himself in his letter to Queen Isabella many years later, but he was frustratingly vague, talking about a land called 'Thile' and tides of extraordinary variation. But his account agrees with the stories of an Italian nobleman staying near Ólafsvík.
The claims by some historians that if Columbus did visit Iceland he would have been unlikely to hear of Vinland are laughable. I quote from an article in a learned historical journal I read in the British Library:
"There is no need to suggest that he [Columbus] learned of the medieval Greenland colony: Icelanders had lost interest in it after Norway took control of contacts with it . . . He is still less likely to have heard of the Vinland sagas, even if they had been retained in folk memory, which is very doubtful, or had been written down in unintelligible language between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries."
This is one of the all-time classic underestimations of Iceland. The fifteenth century was the greatest period when the sagas were copied. Iceland was full of priests who understood Latin. Icelanders had traded with Greenland in living memory; some had attended a wedding there seventy years before. If Columbus did visit Iceland in 1477, as he claimed he did, he would most certainly have heard about Vinland.
Plenty to get my teeth into. In September 2018, almost ten years after I had first heard of Gudrid and visited Ingjaldshóll where Columbus is rumoured to have stayed, The Wanderer was published.
April 22, 2024
Greenland: Gudrid the Wanderer wanders all over the place.
I first heard of Gudrídur Thorbjarnardóttir, or Gudrid the Wanderer, when I was visiting my ecclesiastical contact, the Reverend Sara. She showed me her church, an amazing modern building with an altar bathed in light reflected off water, in the Reykjavík suburb of Grafarholt. The church was dedicated to Gudrid. She told me about Gudrid's travels from Iceland to Greenland to North America and back again, and then on to Rome, all around the year 1000 AD. I found this extraordinary; I still do.
As I discovered more about Gudrid, I determined to write a book about her. But writing a twenty-first-century detective novel about a Viking explorer is not easy. It took me several years to alight on a way of doing it, but I got there in the end.
A TV crew is making a documentary about Gudrid, following in her footsteps to Greenland and North America, when someone is murdered. Magnus investigates. The resulting book is called The Wanderer.
Before Magnus could get on the case, I needed to do my own investigation. There are two sagas which give a broad picture of the Viking settlement of Greenland and exploration of North America: The Saga of the Greenlanders, and The Saga of Erik the Red, together known as The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America and published by Penguin Classics. These describe the following story.
The outlaw Erik the Red sailed from Iceland and established himself at a farm at Brattahlíd in the south-west of Greenland. Gudrid followed him, with her first husband, who died soon after they arrived in Greenland. Vikings settled along the west coast of Greenland, at the 'Eastern Settlement' around what is now Qaqortoq, and the 'Western Settlement' further up the coast near what is now the capital, Nuuk.
The Norse remained in Greenland until the fifteenth century. Around the year 1000, Northern Europe was relatively warm, and it was possible to grow crops in Greenland. Greenlanders traded with Iceland and England, narwhal horns being a particularly profitable export, as we have seen.
Most of Greenland is covered with a massive block of ice, many miles deep, but there are small patches of lush green around the south coast. One of these is Brattahlíd, now known as Qassiarsuk, which is on the opposite side of the fjord from the former US airbase and now international airport at Narsarsuaq. You can still see the remains of Erik the Red's farm, and a replica stands a couple of hundred metres away (see photo above – notice how green it is?). In July, the ruins are knee-deep in lush green grass and wild flowers; white and blue icebergs drift sedately by in the fjord. Sheep farming was reintroduced to the area in the 1920s.
The mystery about Greenland isn't how it was settled but how it was abandoned. As the thirteenth century progressed, the climate became colder. The southern fjords were iced up for much of the year. Greenland had been uninhabited when the Norsemen arrived, but in the twelfth century, the Inuit appeared. It's not clear whether they and the Norsemen fought, but the Inuit were expert hunters, and it is probable that they outcompeted the Norsemen, especially when it became too cold for the Viking farmers to grow crops.
The last recorded mention of the Greenland settlement is the description of a wedding at Hvalsey in 1409 by a visiting merchant from Iceland - the ruins of the Norse church there still stand. Eventually, the harbours of Greenland were frozen all the year round. It's not clear what happened to the surviving settlers: some speculate that they headed south to Vinland, some think they were overwhelmed by the Inuit, and others believe they starved to death in the cold.
Six hundred years later, I shiver to think about those last settlers trapped year-round by sea ice, waiting for ships from the outside world that never came.
As I discovered more about Gudrid, I determined to write a book about her. But writing a twenty-first-century detective novel about a Viking explorer is not easy. It took me several years to alight on a way of doing it, but I got there in the end.
A TV crew is making a documentary about Gudrid, following in her footsteps to Greenland and North America, when someone is murdered. Magnus investigates. The resulting book is called The Wanderer.
Before Magnus could get on the case, I needed to do my own investigation. There are two sagas which give a broad picture of the Viking settlement of Greenland and exploration of North America: The Saga of the Greenlanders, and The Saga of Erik the Red, together known as The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America and published by Penguin Classics. These describe the following story.
The outlaw Erik the Red sailed from Iceland and established himself at a farm at Brattahlíd in the south-west of Greenland. Gudrid followed him, with her first husband, who died soon after they arrived in Greenland. Vikings settled along the west coast of Greenland, at the 'Eastern Settlement' around what is now Qaqortoq, and the 'Western Settlement' further up the coast near what is now the capital, Nuuk.
The Norse remained in Greenland until the fifteenth century. Around the year 1000, Northern Europe was relatively warm, and it was possible to grow crops in Greenland. Greenlanders traded with Iceland and England, narwhal horns being a particularly profitable export, as we have seen.
Most of Greenland is covered with a massive block of ice, many miles deep, but there are small patches of lush green around the south coast. One of these is Brattahlíd, now known as Qassiarsuk, which is on the opposite side of the fjord from the former US airbase and now international airport at Narsarsuaq. You can still see the remains of Erik the Red's farm, and a replica stands a couple of hundred metres away (see photo above – notice how green it is?). In July, the ruins are knee-deep in lush green grass and wild flowers; white and blue icebergs drift sedately by in the fjord. Sheep farming was reintroduced to the area in the 1920s.
The mystery about Greenland isn't how it was settled but how it was abandoned. As the thirteenth century progressed, the climate became colder. The southern fjords were iced up for much of the year. Greenland had been uninhabited when the Norsemen arrived, but in the twelfth century, the Inuit appeared. It's not clear whether they and the Norsemen fought, but the Inuit were expert hunters, and it is probable that they outcompeted the Norsemen, especially when it became too cold for the Viking farmers to grow crops.
The last recorded mention of the Greenland settlement is the description of a wedding at Hvalsey in 1409 by a visiting merchant from Iceland - the ruins of the Norse church there still stand. Eventually, the harbours of Greenland were frozen all the year round. It's not clear what happened to the surviving settlers: some speculate that they headed south to Vinland, some think they were overwhelmed by the Inuit, and others believe they starved to death in the cold.
Six hundred years later, I shiver to think about those last settlers trapped year-round by sea ice, waiting for ships from the outside world that never came.
February 8, 2024
Iceland in World War II: New Book Whale Fjord
Very few people outside Iceland realize that Britain occupied the country in 1940; I certainly hadn’t heard of it until I started writing novels set there.
Royal Marines landed in Reykjavík in May that year and they were soon relieved by the British territorial 49th Division from Yorkshire – nicknamed ‘the Polar Bears’ – and a Canadian brigade including the exotically named Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa and Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal.
At its height, at the end of 1940, there were over 25,000 British and Canadian troops defending the country. This has always seemed odd to me – I would have thought they could more usefully have defended Britain from the Germans just across the Channel. But Major-General Curtis, the commanding officer in Iceland, was adamant they were needed. No one thought to check with the Royal Navy, who were equally certain the Germans could never have transported an invading force to Iceland and, more importantly, supplied it once it had landed.
In the summer of 1941, the Canadians and the British left for Britain, and handed over the defence of Iceland to the Americans. While the Allied soldiers never did anything more than fire at a few Luftwaffe aeroplanes flying overhead, aircraft from Iceland harried German U-boats in the North Atlantic, and Hvalfjördur was the mustering point for many of the Arctic convoys to Russia.
Life in Iceland for the occupiers was tedious – the main enemies were boredom and the weather. But many fell in love with the country, and some fell in love with its people.
The same troops landed in Normandy in June 1944 and fought their way through France, so in retrospect their time in Iceland was a period of peace and quiet.
The Icelanders’ reaction was mixed. No one likes to be invaded, and many were concerned about the conquest of their women, a situation known in Icelandic as “The Situation”.
On the other hand, there was plenty of money to be made, especially once the Americans arrived. The occupying soldiers generally behaved well.
Many, if not all, of the population might have agreed with the Icelandic MP Árni Jónasson when he said: ‘It was practically a unique example in history of an occupying army which was better liked on the day of its departure than on the day of its arrival.’
I have always wanted to write about this period in Icelandic history, but I couldn’t work out how I could link a murder in 1940 with a detective investigation in the 2020s. Any character still alive in 2023 would have been a small child in 1940. Very tricky. But, after several years of mulling over various ideas, I found the solution. And I was able to write the novel.
It’s called Whale Fjord:Whale Fjord and it’s out on 24 February. More details later.
Royal Marines landed in Reykjavík in May that year and they were soon relieved by the British territorial 49th Division from Yorkshire – nicknamed ‘the Polar Bears’ – and a Canadian brigade including the exotically named Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa and Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal.
At its height, at the end of 1940, there were over 25,000 British and Canadian troops defending the country. This has always seemed odd to me – I would have thought they could more usefully have defended Britain from the Germans just across the Channel. But Major-General Curtis, the commanding officer in Iceland, was adamant they were needed. No one thought to check with the Royal Navy, who were equally certain the Germans could never have transported an invading force to Iceland and, more importantly, supplied it once it had landed.
In the summer of 1941, the Canadians and the British left for Britain, and handed over the defence of Iceland to the Americans. While the Allied soldiers never did anything more than fire at a few Luftwaffe aeroplanes flying overhead, aircraft from Iceland harried German U-boats in the North Atlantic, and Hvalfjördur was the mustering point for many of the Arctic convoys to Russia.
Life in Iceland for the occupiers was tedious – the main enemies were boredom and the weather. But many fell in love with the country, and some fell in love with its people.
The same troops landed in Normandy in June 1944 and fought their way through France, so in retrospect their time in Iceland was a period of peace and quiet.
The Icelanders’ reaction was mixed. No one likes to be invaded, and many were concerned about the conquest of their women, a situation known in Icelandic as “The Situation”.
On the other hand, there was plenty of money to be made, especially once the Americans arrived. The occupying soldiers generally behaved well.
Many, if not all, of the population might have agreed with the Icelandic MP Árni Jónasson when he said: ‘It was practically a unique example in history of an occupying army which was better liked on the day of its departure than on the day of its arrival.’
I have always wanted to write about this period in Icelandic history, but I couldn’t work out how I could link a murder in 1940 with a detective investigation in the 2020s. Any character still alive in 2023 would have been a small child in 1940. Very tricky. But, after several years of mulling over various ideas, I found the solution. And I was able to write the novel.
It’s called Whale Fjord:Whale Fjord and it’s out on 24 February. More details later.
December 30, 2023
Iceland blows its top again
Iceland blew its top last week. And then it calmed down.
This was the third eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula in the last three years. It was the most spectacular – and the briefest – to date.
The volcano erupted on the evening of 18th December. Rather than a classic conical volcano, this eruption site is a four-kilometre-long fissure which threw a wall of fire into the air and spewed lava over the mountainside.
Within twenty-four hours the ferocity of the eruption had diminished and it was declared over after only three days. The first eruption, at nearby Fagradalsfjall, lasted months.
The site is only three kilometres from Grindavík. The fissure actually stretches under the centre of the town and for a couple of days in early November, it looked as if Grindavík itself might erupt. That doesn’t mean lava flowing down onto the town like it did at Herculaneum, say, but rather lava bursting up from beneath the streets and houses.
Scary if you are a resident. The town and the nearby Blue Lagoon tourist destination were evacuated in early November. By last week, the threat seemed to have diminished and residents were allowed back into town for brief periods during the day.
On Sunday the Blue Lagoon opened up again to tourists, and the following evening a hotelier who had defied the authorities and spent the night in Grindavík appeared on TV to declare that the emergency services were a bunch of wusses. The volcano erupted that night.
I was in Grindavík in October. The town is about 50 km from Reykjavík on the south coast of the peninsula that sticks out into the Atlantic to the west of the capital, and 15km south of the main road to the airport, just beyond the Blue Lagoon. The town has a population of about 4,000 people. It is not exactly picturesque – it’s a serious fishing town with many storage and processing sheds and equipment.
It’s also where Gunnhildur lives, the police officer in Quentin Bates’s excellent crime novels.
Back in November, the residents were told to evacuate in the middle of the night with no warning. Although they have been allowed back briefly, the situation does not look good. Their town might erupt again at any moment. From 23 December, residents were allowed back overnight over the Christmas period, but now the authorities think there may be another eruption on New Year's Eve. I can't help feeling very sorry for the Grindavíkers.
Needless to say, Icelanders pulled together to provide accommodation for the evacuees, including foreign workers who have no local support network of friends and relatives.
Amazingly, there have been no deaths directly resulting from the three eruptions so far. But it isn’t surprising that one hiker had to be airlifted to safety after hiking to the volcano and becoming disoriented.
You thought Eyjafjallajökull was bad! This one is called Sundhnjúkargígaröd. I am practising. Snood–hnurr–gigglegarod? I’ll get it eventually.
This was the third eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula in the last three years. It was the most spectacular – and the briefest – to date.
The volcano erupted on the evening of 18th December. Rather than a classic conical volcano, this eruption site is a four-kilometre-long fissure which threw a wall of fire into the air and spewed lava over the mountainside.
Within twenty-four hours the ferocity of the eruption had diminished and it was declared over after only three days. The first eruption, at nearby Fagradalsfjall, lasted months.
The site is only three kilometres from Grindavík. The fissure actually stretches under the centre of the town and for a couple of days in early November, it looked as if Grindavík itself might erupt. That doesn’t mean lava flowing down onto the town like it did at Herculaneum, say, but rather lava bursting up from beneath the streets and houses.
Scary if you are a resident. The town and the nearby Blue Lagoon tourist destination were evacuated in early November. By last week, the threat seemed to have diminished and residents were allowed back into town for brief periods during the day.
On Sunday the Blue Lagoon opened up again to tourists, and the following evening a hotelier who had defied the authorities and spent the night in Grindavík appeared on TV to declare that the emergency services were a bunch of wusses. The volcano erupted that night.
I was in Grindavík in October. The town is about 50 km from Reykjavík on the south coast of the peninsula that sticks out into the Atlantic to the west of the capital, and 15km south of the main road to the airport, just beyond the Blue Lagoon. The town has a population of about 4,000 people. It is not exactly picturesque – it’s a serious fishing town with many storage and processing sheds and equipment.
It’s also where Gunnhildur lives, the police officer in Quentin Bates’s excellent crime novels.
Back in November, the residents were told to evacuate in the middle of the night with no warning. Although they have been allowed back briefly, the situation does not look good. Their town might erupt again at any moment. From 23 December, residents were allowed back overnight over the Christmas period, but now the authorities think there may be another eruption on New Year's Eve. I can't help feeling very sorry for the Grindavíkers.
Needless to say, Icelanders pulled together to provide accommodation for the evacuees, including foreign workers who have no local support network of friends and relatives.
Amazingly, there have been no deaths directly resulting from the three eruptions so far. But it isn’t surprising that one hiker had to be airlifted to safety after hiking to the volcano and becoming disoriented.
You thought Eyjafjallajökull was bad! This one is called Sundhnjúkargígaröd. I am practising. Snood–hnurr–gigglegarod? I’ll get it eventually.
November 30, 2023
A 5-day itinerary for Iceland trip
For years, a group of old friends, who have also been loyal readers of my books, have been asking me to show them around Iceland. I promised I would one day, and this year I decided to take the plunge. If not now, when?
So I drew up an itinerary for the eight of us – four couples - and we went at the beginning of October.
The trip worked very well. And since readers often ask me to suggest places to visit in Iceland, I thought I would share the itinerary with you.
There were some important decisions to be made first.
When to go? Iceland gets very crowded in July and August and the weather isn’t very good anyway. It’s dark in winter. For a land with no trees, the autumn colours can be quite spectacular. So we chose early October.
How long to go for? There would be plenty to see on a two-week trip to Iceland, but it would also be expensive. So we settled on five days.
What about Reykjavik? Once again, there is plenty to see in Reykjavik, but we decided since we had limited time, we would spend most of it in the Icelandic countryside. The centre of Reykjavik is quite small, and you can get a little bit of a feel for it walking around for 3 hours or so.
Where to go? The Snaefellsnes peninsula has featured heavily in my books and there is plenty to do there. It’s also only three hours from Reykjavik. So that, plus the three big sights of Thingvellir, Gullfoss and Geysir seemed a good choice.
Here is the itinerary:
Day 1
Arrive in Iceland.
Dinner Apotek. A good restaurant just off the Austurvöllur square in central Reykjavík.
Hotel: The Reykjavik Residence Hotel. Rooms are in a series of old houses full of character in the city centre.
Day 2
Walk around Reykjavik. Cafe Mokka on Skólavördustígur; the Hallgrímskirkja including view from the tower; walk downhill through residential streets of old brightly coloured metal-clad houses; the Tjörnin pond; the Reykjavík City Hall with large relief map of Iceland; the Austurvöllur square outside Parliament; Baejarins Beztu Pylsur hot dog stand; the Harpa opera house; walk along the bay to the Viking longship sculpture.
Afternoon. Drive to Snaefellsnes.
Hotel. Hótel Búdir. My favourite hotel in Iceland in a spectacular location. View of the mountains, the Snaefelsjökull volcano, a lava field and the black church. Good food too – lamb and fish recommended.
Day 3
The Snaefellsnes Peninsula, as featured in a couple of my books, especially Sea of Stone. Pretty fishing village of Stykkishólmur; Helgafell the "holy mountain" of the sagas; the Berserkjahraun and the Berserkjagata (a path cut through the lava field by two berserkers a thousand years ago); the shark museum at Bjarnarhöfn; lunch in Grundarfjördur looking out on the photogenic Kirkjufell mountain; Hellnar and a 2km walk along the cliffs to Arnarstapi and back
Hotel. Hótel Búdir
Day 4
Drive to Hvalfjördur – "Whale Fjord" – and along the south shore of the fjord, where my next book Whale Fjord is set. Hvammsvik hot springs - an amazing series of hot pots by the side of the fjord with a wonderful view. Worth the expensive entrance, but you need to book online in advance.
Afternoon. Thingvellir, the open-air Parliament set next to a dramatic gorge between the two continental plates.
Hotel: Blue Hotel Fagralundur in Reykholt. Well run and not expensive. Dinner at the good Mika restaurant next door.
Day 5
Morning. Geysir – the geyser – and Gullfoss– a waterfall of magnificent power.
Afternoon either Reykjavik revisited or Kleifarvatn and the Seltún hot springs to the south-west of Reykjavík.
Hotel: Cheap hotel by the airport, but don't choose the one we stayed in!
Day 6
Morning flight home.
There are countless other ways of seeing Iceland, but this trip worked well. It is amazing how much variety you can squeeze into five days! If you have any questions about this itinerary, just ask me.
So I drew up an itinerary for the eight of us – four couples - and we went at the beginning of October.
The trip worked very well. And since readers often ask me to suggest places to visit in Iceland, I thought I would share the itinerary with you.
There were some important decisions to be made first.
When to go? Iceland gets very crowded in July and August and the weather isn’t very good anyway. It’s dark in winter. For a land with no trees, the autumn colours can be quite spectacular. So we chose early October.
How long to go for? There would be plenty to see on a two-week trip to Iceland, but it would also be expensive. So we settled on five days.
What about Reykjavik? Once again, there is plenty to see in Reykjavik, but we decided since we had limited time, we would spend most of it in the Icelandic countryside. The centre of Reykjavik is quite small, and you can get a little bit of a feel for it walking around for 3 hours or so.
Where to go? The Snaefellsnes peninsula has featured heavily in my books and there is plenty to do there. It’s also only three hours from Reykjavik. So that, plus the three big sights of Thingvellir, Gullfoss and Geysir seemed a good choice.
Here is the itinerary:
Day 1
Arrive in Iceland.
Dinner Apotek. A good restaurant just off the Austurvöllur square in central Reykjavík.
Hotel: The Reykjavik Residence Hotel. Rooms are in a series of old houses full of character in the city centre.
Day 2
Walk around Reykjavik. Cafe Mokka on Skólavördustígur; the Hallgrímskirkja including view from the tower; walk downhill through residential streets of old brightly coloured metal-clad houses; the Tjörnin pond; the Reykjavík City Hall with large relief map of Iceland; the Austurvöllur square outside Parliament; Baejarins Beztu Pylsur hot dog stand; the Harpa opera house; walk along the bay to the Viking longship sculpture.
Afternoon. Drive to Snaefellsnes.
Hotel. Hótel Búdir. My favourite hotel in Iceland in a spectacular location. View of the mountains, the Snaefelsjökull volcano, a lava field and the black church. Good food too – lamb and fish recommended.
Day 3
The Snaefellsnes Peninsula, as featured in a couple of my books, especially Sea of Stone. Pretty fishing village of Stykkishólmur; Helgafell the "holy mountain" of the sagas; the Berserkjahraun and the Berserkjagata (a path cut through the lava field by two berserkers a thousand years ago); the shark museum at Bjarnarhöfn; lunch in Grundarfjördur looking out on the photogenic Kirkjufell mountain; Hellnar and a 2km walk along the cliffs to Arnarstapi and back
Hotel. Hótel Búdir
Day 4
Drive to Hvalfjördur – "Whale Fjord" – and along the south shore of the fjord, where my next book Whale Fjord is set. Hvammsvik hot springs - an amazing series of hot pots by the side of the fjord with a wonderful view. Worth the expensive entrance, but you need to book online in advance.
Afternoon. Thingvellir, the open-air Parliament set next to a dramatic gorge between the two continental plates.
Hotel: Blue Hotel Fagralundur in Reykholt. Well run and not expensive. Dinner at the good Mika restaurant next door.
Day 5
Morning. Geysir – the geyser – and Gullfoss– a waterfall of magnificent power.
Afternoon either Reykjavik revisited or Kleifarvatn and the Seltún hot springs to the south-west of Reykjavík.
Hotel: Cheap hotel by the airport, but don't choose the one we stayed in!
Day 6
Morning flight home.
There are countless other ways of seeing Iceland, but this trip worked well. It is amazing how much variety you can squeeze into five days! If you have any questions about this itinerary, just ask me.
October 24, 2023
Snow in Iceland
The weather in Iceland is terrible. But then it changes.
A perfect example of this was my research trip to Saudárkrókur in northern Iceland in November 2016. It was snowing hard in Reykjavík. I only had four days to get to Saudárkrókur and back, a distance of about three hundred kilometres there and three hundred kilometres back, and I was worried. According to the government website, road travel was not recommended. You don’t argue with Icelanders on the subject of snow: if they say it’s too bad to drive, it’s too bad to drive.
I lost a day, spent in the snow in Reykjavík. The following morning, at about 10 a.m., the website advice changed to a go. So I went.
The first hundred kilometres along the Ring Road were fine. I passed the windy headland by Borgarnes successfully, and drove north through the snow.
Then the road climbed to the notorious Holtavörduheidi, the highlands between the west and the north of Iceland. People lost their way and died trying to cross this on foot or horseback well into the twentieth century, and the weather hasn’t improved since then. Sure enough, I entered cloud and never left it for another hundred kilometres. I drove along at thirty kilometres an hour, both hands on the wheel, staring hard at the road ahead.
There are beautiful lakes and mountains on either side of the road here. So I am told. I didn’t see them. But the snowfall had eased off, the road had been cleared, and I made it to Saudárkrókur.
I didn’t have much time. I visited Glaumbaer in the snow. Glaumbaer is where Gudrid the Wanderer lived after she returned to Iceland from Greenland, and it was where a body was going to be found on page one of my next book, The Wanderer. In August, without snow, when it would look decidedly different. I then visited the local police station, saw two slightly sinister ravens circling in the middle of town, and stayed the night at the Tindastóll, one of the oldest hotels in Iceland. And yes, a discussion with the chambermaid confirmed that there was a ghost in that hotel.
I wanted to give myself plenty of time for the trip back to Keflavík to catch my flight, and so I set off from Saudárkrókur early, while it was still dark. The snow had stopped, the roads were clear, and the sun rose to reveal a sight of pristine beauty. The following hours I drove through some of the most beautiful landscape I have seen in my life.
It wasn’t any one mountain, or any one view. It was a combination of thick newly fallen snow, smooth lakes, dramatic mountain slopes and desolate emptiness, with only the odd, tiny hut showing any sign of habitation.
And the light. During his visit in 1936, W. H. Auden wrote: ‘Iceland is the sun colouring the mountains without being anywhere in sight, even sunk beyond the horizon.’ It’s still true.
The sun in Iceland is always low, but in winter it is particularly low. It appears above the horizon at about ten o’clock, brushing clouds, water and mountainsides pink. Then it rolls along the horizon before sinking in another glorious inferno of orange and red. As I drove, the sunlight reflected off the clouds in a diffuse pink, even at midday, shifting to yellow, grey and purple as it brought the shape of the towering cloud formations into dramatic relief. Patches of clear sky were light blue and pure. The rivers were pink or a burnished copper, depending on the angle the sun struck them; in shadow they were a ruffled black. Ice shifted colour from white to black, via grey, yellow and brown.
That day the scenery was constantly changing, and I was constantly pulling over to take photographs. As I approached the town of Borgarnes, billowing steam was added to the mix, as the vapour from geothermal pools condensed in the cold air.
It was all glorious.
A perfect example of this was my research trip to Saudárkrókur in northern Iceland in November 2016. It was snowing hard in Reykjavík. I only had four days to get to Saudárkrókur and back, a distance of about three hundred kilometres there and three hundred kilometres back, and I was worried. According to the government website, road travel was not recommended. You don’t argue with Icelanders on the subject of snow: if they say it’s too bad to drive, it’s too bad to drive.
I lost a day, spent in the snow in Reykjavík. The following morning, at about 10 a.m., the website advice changed to a go. So I went.
The first hundred kilometres along the Ring Road were fine. I passed the windy headland by Borgarnes successfully, and drove north through the snow.
Then the road climbed to the notorious Holtavörduheidi, the highlands between the west and the north of Iceland. People lost their way and died trying to cross this on foot or horseback well into the twentieth century, and the weather hasn’t improved since then. Sure enough, I entered cloud and never left it for another hundred kilometres. I drove along at thirty kilometres an hour, both hands on the wheel, staring hard at the road ahead.
There are beautiful lakes and mountains on either side of the road here. So I am told. I didn’t see them. But the snowfall had eased off, the road had been cleared, and I made it to Saudárkrókur.
I didn’t have much time. I visited Glaumbaer in the snow. Glaumbaer is where Gudrid the Wanderer lived after she returned to Iceland from Greenland, and it was where a body was going to be found on page one of my next book, The Wanderer. In August, without snow, when it would look decidedly different. I then visited the local police station, saw two slightly sinister ravens circling in the middle of town, and stayed the night at the Tindastóll, one of the oldest hotels in Iceland. And yes, a discussion with the chambermaid confirmed that there was a ghost in that hotel.
I wanted to give myself plenty of time for the trip back to Keflavík to catch my flight, and so I set off from Saudárkrókur early, while it was still dark. The snow had stopped, the roads were clear, and the sun rose to reveal a sight of pristine beauty. The following hours I drove through some of the most beautiful landscape I have seen in my life.
It wasn’t any one mountain, or any one view. It was a combination of thick newly fallen snow, smooth lakes, dramatic mountain slopes and desolate emptiness, with only the odd, tiny hut showing any sign of habitation.
And the light. During his visit in 1936, W. H. Auden wrote: ‘Iceland is the sun colouring the mountains without being anywhere in sight, even sunk beyond the horizon.’ It’s still true.
The sun in Iceland is always low, but in winter it is particularly low. It appears above the horizon at about ten o’clock, brushing clouds, water and mountainsides pink. Then it rolls along the horizon before sinking in another glorious inferno of orange and red. As I drove, the sunlight reflected off the clouds in a diffuse pink, even at midday, shifting to yellow, grey and purple as it brought the shape of the towering cloud formations into dramatic relief. Patches of clear sky were light blue and pure. The rivers were pink or a burnished copper, depending on the angle the sun struck them; in shadow they were a ruffled black. Ice shifted colour from white to black, via grey, yellow and brown.
That day the scenery was constantly changing, and I was constantly pulling over to take photographs. As I approached the town of Borgarnes, billowing steam was added to the mix, as the vapour from geothermal pools condensed in the cold air.
It was all glorious.
September 28, 2023
Weather in Iceland: If you don't like it, wait ten minutes and try again
The weather in Reykjavík is uninspiring. Winters are about the same temperature as Hamburg, but summers don’t get as warm. It is milder than you would think in winter: the temperature only dips a few degrees below zero, nothing like the freezes felt in Chicago or Moscow, which are much further south. Trouble is, it doesn’t get that warm in summer: temperatures rarely rise above 15 °C - the average high is only 13 °C in July.
The real problem is the wind and the rain. Rain comes in many different forms. When it rains hard, it can feel like someone pouring a bucket of water on your head. Or it can feel like someone throwing a bucket of water at you from the pavement, if it’s windy. No umbrella has been known to survive in Iceland: they die rapidly, torn to shreds by the wind. There are two ways of dealing with the wind. One is to face directly into it and lean. The other is to stay inside and read a book.
However, they say that if you don’t like the weather in Reykjavík, just wait ten minutes and try again. That wind blows a series of weather fronts in from the Atlantic, where the warm water of the Gulf Stream creates small angry balls of low pressure, which sweep through Iceland, bringing dark clouds, heavy rain, but then crystal-clear skies, puffy clouds and rainbows. Lots of beautiful rainbows, many of them doubles.
They say there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. I’m not convinced by this. Icelanders mock tourists in Reykjavík for walking around their capital in cagoules or bright ski jackets. Icelanders own stylish dark-coloured coats, waterproof and windproof with warm padding and hoods for walking around the city. I suspect these are expensive. They have another wardrobe of expensive outdoor gear for prancing around the countryside in blizzards. Their fancy city coats would make no sense in Milan or Madrid, or even London or Paris, so I am with the tourists. If Thor, or whoever, is chucking buckets of water down on Reykjavík, then wear your bright orange rain jacket and be damned. Just don’t rely on an umbrella to protect you.
Reykjavík is in the south-west corner of Iceland and receives the brunt of the Atlantic weather. To the north, in Akureyri, the weather is slightly better. On the mountains - and much of Iceland is mountainous - the weather is naturally worse: the wind stronger and the temperature lower. Large areas of the highlands in the uninhabited interior of the country lie in rain shadow and don’t receive any rainfall at all. They are effectively deserts. Deserts with rivers, as meltwater from glaciers fifty kilometres away rushes through them on the way to the sea.
The real problem is the wind and the rain. Rain comes in many different forms. When it rains hard, it can feel like someone pouring a bucket of water on your head. Or it can feel like someone throwing a bucket of water at you from the pavement, if it’s windy. No umbrella has been known to survive in Iceland: they die rapidly, torn to shreds by the wind. There are two ways of dealing with the wind. One is to face directly into it and lean. The other is to stay inside and read a book.
However, they say that if you don’t like the weather in Reykjavík, just wait ten minutes and try again. That wind blows a series of weather fronts in from the Atlantic, where the warm water of the Gulf Stream creates small angry balls of low pressure, which sweep through Iceland, bringing dark clouds, heavy rain, but then crystal-clear skies, puffy clouds and rainbows. Lots of beautiful rainbows, many of them doubles.
They say there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. I’m not convinced by this. Icelanders mock tourists in Reykjavík for walking around their capital in cagoules or bright ski jackets. Icelanders own stylish dark-coloured coats, waterproof and windproof with warm padding and hoods for walking around the city. I suspect these are expensive. They have another wardrobe of expensive outdoor gear for prancing around the countryside in blizzards. Their fancy city coats would make no sense in Milan or Madrid, or even London or Paris, so I am with the tourists. If Thor, or whoever, is chucking buckets of water down on Reykjavík, then wear your bright orange rain jacket and be damned. Just don’t rely on an umbrella to protect you.
Reykjavík is in the south-west corner of Iceland and receives the brunt of the Atlantic weather. To the north, in Akureyri, the weather is slightly better. On the mountains - and much of Iceland is mountainous - the weather is naturally worse: the wind stronger and the temperature lower. Large areas of the highlands in the uninhabited interior of the country lie in rain shadow and don’t receive any rainfall at all. They are effectively deserts. Deserts with rivers, as meltwater from glaciers fifty kilometres away rushes through them on the way to the sea.
August 15, 2023
Summer and Autumn in Iceland
Nordic countries are often depicted as being dark, gloomy and depressing. But that is only half the story. The other half is summer, when the sun shines for twenty-one hours. It is light at 11 p.m. in Reykjavík on a Saturday night when the crowds are going into the bars and it is light at 2 a.m. when they are leaving. It is an extraordinary sight to see so many drunk people so early in the morning.
Icelanders become manic. Their eyes sparkle bright blue, but there are red rims around them. On the farms, if winter was the time of snoozing, summer was the time of eighteen-hour days. A whole year’s farming had to be crammed into a few short months. In particular, the hay had to be harvested to feed the livestock over the winter.
Today Icelanders are still busy eighteen hours a day in summer. Eight o’clock in the evening feels like mid-afternoon. It can be difficult trying to go to sleep at ten thirty when your body is telling you it is early evening.
Then comes autumn. Despite the lack of trees, there are autumn colours in Iceland. Various berries and dwarf willows and birches change colour, and the lava fields and heathlands glow in purples and oranges.
Autumn is also the time of the réttir, the annual round-up, when the members of a farming community get on their horses and spend three days scouring the mountains with their sheepdogs rounding up their sheep. The beasts are brought down to pens, sorted by the farmers, and put in barns for the winter. The farmers and their children get very excited at seeing their sheep again, all of whom have their own names, and a good time is had by all. I have no idea what the sheep think about it. I once wrote a short story called The Super Recogniser of Vík about a farmer who was expert at recognizing sheep and was dragged to Reykjavík by Magnus to look at CCTV to find a burglar.
So when is the best time to come to Iceland? Most people come in July and August: these are the two warmest months, and of course children are on school holiday. Personally, I avoid these two months. I’d rather spend the summer months somewhere where the temperature exceeds 20 °C.
More importantly, Iceland is crowded. Tourist numbers are rocketing: from only a few hundred thousand at the time of the kreppa in 2009 to over two million a year now. Despite a construction frenzy in Reykjavík, the infrastructure can’t keep up. It’s hard for locals to rent accommodation in Reykjavík because most apartments coming on the market are rented out on Airbnb. More worryingly, there are not enough public toilets, especially out in the countryside. This infrastructure is at its most overstretched in July and August.
The Icelandic landscape is much more delicate than it looks; hordes of tourists’ walking boots can wreak havoc on moss and lichens trying to establish themselves on new lava. The paradox of travelling a thousand miles to a desolate spot to enjoy the isolation is highlighted when dozens of others are doing the same thing. Summer is also the time when volunteer search-and-rescue teams become fed up with rescuing tourists who have wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time.
I see I have mentioned the idiotic acts of tourists a number of times in this blog. It’s not that all tourists are stupid - clearly, most are not - but the moronic minority gives the rest of us a bad reputation with the locals.
So I would visit in the slightly quieter months of May and June, or September to November. In September the grass is still green, the snow has yet to fall and it’s beginning to be possible to see the Northern Lights. In November, you can experience winter and yet still enjoy a little daylight. Go expecting bad weather; that way you won’t be disappointed.
I have a trip planned myself in the first week of October this year – I'm really looking forward to it. It will be nearly two years since I last visited Iceland.
Icelanders become manic. Their eyes sparkle bright blue, but there are red rims around them. On the farms, if winter was the time of snoozing, summer was the time of eighteen-hour days. A whole year’s farming had to be crammed into a few short months. In particular, the hay had to be harvested to feed the livestock over the winter.
Today Icelanders are still busy eighteen hours a day in summer. Eight o’clock in the evening feels like mid-afternoon. It can be difficult trying to go to sleep at ten thirty when your body is telling you it is early evening.
Then comes autumn. Despite the lack of trees, there are autumn colours in Iceland. Various berries and dwarf willows and birches change colour, and the lava fields and heathlands glow in purples and oranges.
Autumn is also the time of the réttir, the annual round-up, when the members of a farming community get on their horses and spend three days scouring the mountains with their sheepdogs rounding up their sheep. The beasts are brought down to pens, sorted by the farmers, and put in barns for the winter. The farmers and their children get very excited at seeing their sheep again, all of whom have their own names, and a good time is had by all. I have no idea what the sheep think about it. I once wrote a short story called The Super Recogniser of Vík about a farmer who was expert at recognizing sheep and was dragged to Reykjavík by Magnus to look at CCTV to find a burglar.
So when is the best time to come to Iceland? Most people come in July and August: these are the two warmest months, and of course children are on school holiday. Personally, I avoid these two months. I’d rather spend the summer months somewhere where the temperature exceeds 20 °C.
More importantly, Iceland is crowded. Tourist numbers are rocketing: from only a few hundred thousand at the time of the kreppa in 2009 to over two million a year now. Despite a construction frenzy in Reykjavík, the infrastructure can’t keep up. It’s hard for locals to rent accommodation in Reykjavík because most apartments coming on the market are rented out on Airbnb. More worryingly, there are not enough public toilets, especially out in the countryside. This infrastructure is at its most overstretched in July and August.
The Icelandic landscape is much more delicate than it looks; hordes of tourists’ walking boots can wreak havoc on moss and lichens trying to establish themselves on new lava. The paradox of travelling a thousand miles to a desolate spot to enjoy the isolation is highlighted when dozens of others are doing the same thing. Summer is also the time when volunteer search-and-rescue teams become fed up with rescuing tourists who have wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time.
I see I have mentioned the idiotic acts of tourists a number of times in this blog. It’s not that all tourists are stupid - clearly, most are not - but the moronic minority gives the rest of us a bad reputation with the locals.
So I would visit in the slightly quieter months of May and June, or September to November. In September the grass is still green, the snow has yet to fall and it’s beginning to be possible to see the Northern Lights. In November, you can experience winter and yet still enjoy a little daylight. Go expecting bad weather; that way you won’t be disappointed.
I have a trip planned myself in the first week of October this year – I'm really looking forward to it. It will be nearly two years since I last visited Iceland.
July 18, 2023
My Icelandic Crime Novels
In my last blog post, I gave you a brief survey of the amazing crime writers working in Iceland at the moment. Where do my own books fit into this crowded field?
Well, they are different. Right from the beginning, with my first novel, Where There Shadows Lie, I wanted to deal with how Iceland connected to the rest of the world, to examine issues that affect the globe beyond Iceland.
This was partly because I thought this was a good approach to take, but mostly because that’s the way I have always written my books.
My financial thrillers were about the international tribe that beavers away in international finance. The characters came from many different countries, and the novels were rarely stuck in one setting. I have never yet written an entire book set in England.
This simply reflects my own dreams from an early age. I was brought up in a tiny village in Yorkshire. I wanted to escape to see the world. I had an uncle who was a naturalist in the bush in northern Australia, and I thought he was very exciting.
When I left university, I joined an international bank, partly so I could travel for work and partly because there was a training programme in New York for six months. Which is where I met my American wife and met fellow trainees from all over the world, many of whom became my friends.
My Magnus novels have always included foreigners, just like all my other novels. Magnus himself, as I have explained before, although born in Iceland was brought up in America and learned his detective skills there. I don’t know as much about Icelandic society as the other crime writers who write about Iceland, but I think I can write about the way that Iceland interacts with the rest of the world.
Where The Shadows Lie is about how a lost saga got to Tolkien while he was writing Lord of the Rings; 66 Degrees North is about the global financial crash and how out affected Iceland; Meltwater is about how a volcano traps foreign whistleblowers in Iceland; Sea of Stone is about how a murder in Magnus’s own family spans America and Iceland; The Wanderer is about a hoax taking in Italy, Greenland, Nantucket as well as Iceland.
My most recently published book, Death in Dalvik, about the damage cryptocurrencies can do to a small village, is, I suppose my most Iceland-only book, although the cryptocurrency in question is brought to the country by foreign cypto-evangelists.
And the book I am working on at the moment is about that glorious moment in British history, May 1940, when we invaded Iceland. So glorious, almost no one in Britain knows about it.
The Icelandic saying "glöggt er gests augad" means something like "clear is a guest’s eye". I hope my eye, as a guest of Iceland, is clear. Magnus himself is a guest and very aware of it. In my books, Magnus wrestles with the problem of being neither Icelandic nor American. In a similar way, his partner, Vigdís, struggles with what it is to be a black Icelander. As an observer of people who live in countries that are not their own, these are the kind of issues I think about a lot.
I said my books are different from those of the other writers of Icelandic crime fiction, but if you look closely at their books, they too reflect their own individual backgrounds. Which is part of the joy I’m sure they find in writing their novels, and the joy we have in reading them.
Well, they are different. Right from the beginning, with my first novel, Where There Shadows Lie, I wanted to deal with how Iceland connected to the rest of the world, to examine issues that affect the globe beyond Iceland.
This was partly because I thought this was a good approach to take, but mostly because that’s the way I have always written my books.
My financial thrillers were about the international tribe that beavers away in international finance. The characters came from many different countries, and the novels were rarely stuck in one setting. I have never yet written an entire book set in England.
This simply reflects my own dreams from an early age. I was brought up in a tiny village in Yorkshire. I wanted to escape to see the world. I had an uncle who was a naturalist in the bush in northern Australia, and I thought he was very exciting.
When I left university, I joined an international bank, partly so I could travel for work and partly because there was a training programme in New York for six months. Which is where I met my American wife and met fellow trainees from all over the world, many of whom became my friends.
My Magnus novels have always included foreigners, just like all my other novels. Magnus himself, as I have explained before, although born in Iceland was brought up in America and learned his detective skills there. I don’t know as much about Icelandic society as the other crime writers who write about Iceland, but I think I can write about the way that Iceland interacts with the rest of the world.
Where The Shadows Lie is about how a lost saga got to Tolkien while he was writing Lord of the Rings; 66 Degrees North is about the global financial crash and how out affected Iceland; Meltwater is about how a volcano traps foreign whistleblowers in Iceland; Sea of Stone is about how a murder in Magnus’s own family spans America and Iceland; The Wanderer is about a hoax taking in Italy, Greenland, Nantucket as well as Iceland.
My most recently published book, Death in Dalvik, about the damage cryptocurrencies can do to a small village, is, I suppose my most Iceland-only book, although the cryptocurrency in question is brought to the country by foreign cypto-evangelists.
And the book I am working on at the moment is about that glorious moment in British history, May 1940, when we invaded Iceland. So glorious, almost no one in Britain knows about it.
The Icelandic saying "glöggt er gests augad" means something like "clear is a guest’s eye". I hope my eye, as a guest of Iceland, is clear. Magnus himself is a guest and very aware of it. In my books, Magnus wrestles with the problem of being neither Icelandic nor American. In a similar way, his partner, Vigdís, struggles with what it is to be a black Icelander. As an observer of people who live in countries that are not their own, these are the kind of issues I think about a lot.
I said my books are different from those of the other writers of Icelandic crime fiction, but if you look closely at their books, they too reflect their own individual backgrounds. Which is part of the joy I’m sure they find in writing their novels, and the joy we have in reading them.
June 20, 2023
Icelandic crime writers: a wave of fictional murders overwhelms a small country
When I started writing crime novels in Iceland, I assumed I would have the country entirely to myself. Idiot. It turns out that plenty of Icelandic writers were thinking the same thing at the same time.
There are now an extraordinarily high number of extremely good crime writers in Iceland; why this is so would make a good subject for another blog post. Here is a brief survey of them, starting with the big four who have been published widely abroad, and have reached bestseller lists all over the world.
A caveat. I haven’t read all of the books of all of these authors. And I am friends with a number of them.
Arnaldur Indridason
Arnaldur’s detective, Erlendur, is a policeman of the old school. He yearns for the farm of his childhood in the east of Iceland and he enjoys a sheep’s head for lunch. Arnaldur’s books examine the conflict between the old and the new in Iceland’s society, as well as solving some fascinating crimes. Silence of the Grave, about the discovery of bones dating from the Second World War, won the British Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger in 2005, so I have no excuse for my assumption that I would have the country to myself. I’m not sure whether that is my favourite or Tainted Blood, also known as Jar City, a novel about genetic research, which was made into a film.
Yrsa Sigurdardóttir
Yrsa’s first crime novel translated into English was Last Rituals, featuring a young, disorganized lawyer, Thóra. She followed up with several more Thóra books, and then another series featuring the child psychologist Freyja, as well as a few suspense novels. Yrsa is not afraid of ghosts, or at least writing about them. Her wonderful, wry sense of humour creeps into her books in the most unlikely places, leavening her darker subject matter. I Remember You is deeply unsettling. I think my favourite is The Legacy, one of the Freyja series.
Ragnar Jónasson
Ragnar was obsessed with Agatha Christie as a child and started translating her novels into Icelandic at the age of nineteen. He loves the concept of the locked room mystery: often his characters are stuck in a snowed-in town, or an isolated island, or a hut in a blizzard. His first series featured the naïve detective Ari Thór. His more recent series is about Hulda, a detective coming up to retirement. I would recommend Outside, a fiendishly clever story about a group of friends stuck in a snowstorm in a mountain hut.
Lilja Sigurdardóttir
Lilja has written three novels about Sonja, a desperate single mother driven to drug smuggling: Snare, Trap and Cage, and a political thriller, Betrayal. Sonja’s problems include her lesbian love life, her bankster ex-husband and assorted unpleasant types. Original and absorbing, Lilja’s books have won worldwide acclaim. The French, in particular, seem to like them. She has embarked on a new series which ostensibly features her Anglo-Icelandic heroine, Árora, but I like to think is actually about her nice British accountant friend, Michael.
Quentin Bates
Quentin’s detective is Gunnhildur a no-nonsense detective with a complicated family. Although English like me, Quentin knows much more than me about Iceland: his wife is Icelandic and he spent many years working on Icelandic trawlers. He depicts the chaos of Icelandic life: the messy family structures of half-brothers and step-sisters and he is good on the criminals, especially of the hapless variety.
There are plenty of other excellent authors to choose from.
I have not yet read any of Eva Björg Aegisdóttir’s books, but her debut, Creak on the Stairs, won the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger and I hear her novels are very good.
Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson’s The Flatey Enigma is set in 1960 on the tiny island of Flatey, home of the famous saga collection the Flateyjarbók. It’s a murder mystery with a literary puzzle included. A different flavour from the other crime novels on this list. His day job is to write the traffic signs in Iceland.
I have also read excellent books by Árni Thórarinsson (set in Akureyri in the north), Solveig Pálsdóttir and Jónína Leósdóttir (who have both featured in guest posts on this blog) and Óskar Gudmundsson.
Credit should go to two publishers – Orenda Books and Corylus Books – who have brought most of these authors to the English-speaking world and to Quentin Bates for translating many of them into English so well. I am impressed at how he manages to convey the very different voices of each writer.
If you would like to read some novels about crime in Iceland, there is plenty to choose from here.
In my next post, I will talk about my own crime novels. They are different from these. Not better, not worse, just different.
There are now an extraordinarily high number of extremely good crime writers in Iceland; why this is so would make a good subject for another blog post. Here is a brief survey of them, starting with the big four who have been published widely abroad, and have reached bestseller lists all over the world.
A caveat. I haven’t read all of the books of all of these authors. And I am friends with a number of them.
Arnaldur Indridason
Arnaldur’s detective, Erlendur, is a policeman of the old school. He yearns for the farm of his childhood in the east of Iceland and he enjoys a sheep’s head for lunch. Arnaldur’s books examine the conflict between the old and the new in Iceland’s society, as well as solving some fascinating crimes. Silence of the Grave, about the discovery of bones dating from the Second World War, won the British Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger in 2005, so I have no excuse for my assumption that I would have the country to myself. I’m not sure whether that is my favourite or Tainted Blood, also known as Jar City, a novel about genetic research, which was made into a film.
Yrsa Sigurdardóttir
Yrsa’s first crime novel translated into English was Last Rituals, featuring a young, disorganized lawyer, Thóra. She followed up with several more Thóra books, and then another series featuring the child psychologist Freyja, as well as a few suspense novels. Yrsa is not afraid of ghosts, or at least writing about them. Her wonderful, wry sense of humour creeps into her books in the most unlikely places, leavening her darker subject matter. I Remember You is deeply unsettling. I think my favourite is The Legacy, one of the Freyja series.
Ragnar Jónasson
Ragnar was obsessed with Agatha Christie as a child and started translating her novels into Icelandic at the age of nineteen. He loves the concept of the locked room mystery: often his characters are stuck in a snowed-in town, or an isolated island, or a hut in a blizzard. His first series featured the naïve detective Ari Thór. His more recent series is about Hulda, a detective coming up to retirement. I would recommend Outside, a fiendishly clever story about a group of friends stuck in a snowstorm in a mountain hut.
Lilja Sigurdardóttir
Lilja has written three novels about Sonja, a desperate single mother driven to drug smuggling: Snare, Trap and Cage, and a political thriller, Betrayal. Sonja’s problems include her lesbian love life, her bankster ex-husband and assorted unpleasant types. Original and absorbing, Lilja’s books have won worldwide acclaim. The French, in particular, seem to like them. She has embarked on a new series which ostensibly features her Anglo-Icelandic heroine, Árora, but I like to think is actually about her nice British accountant friend, Michael.
Quentin Bates
Quentin’s detective is Gunnhildur a no-nonsense detective with a complicated family. Although English like me, Quentin knows much more than me about Iceland: his wife is Icelandic and he spent many years working on Icelandic trawlers. He depicts the chaos of Icelandic life: the messy family structures of half-brothers and step-sisters and he is good on the criminals, especially of the hapless variety.
There are plenty of other excellent authors to choose from.
I have not yet read any of Eva Björg Aegisdóttir’s books, but her debut, Creak on the Stairs, won the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger and I hear her novels are very good.
Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson’s The Flatey Enigma is set in 1960 on the tiny island of Flatey, home of the famous saga collection the Flateyjarbók. It’s a murder mystery with a literary puzzle included. A different flavour from the other crime novels on this list. His day job is to write the traffic signs in Iceland.
I have also read excellent books by Árni Thórarinsson (set in Akureyri in the north), Solveig Pálsdóttir and Jónína Leósdóttir (who have both featured in guest posts on this blog) and Óskar Gudmundsson.
Credit should go to two publishers – Orenda Books and Corylus Books – who have brought most of these authors to the English-speaking world and to Quentin Bates for translating many of them into English so well. I am impressed at how he manages to convey the very different voices of each writer.
If you would like to read some novels about crime in Iceland, there is plenty to choose from here.
In my next post, I will talk about my own crime novels. They are different from these. Not better, not worse, just different.
