Writing in Ice: A Crime Writer's Guide to Iceland

  TV and Film Iceland has become a favourite location for films and television series in the last few years. Here are some that I have enjoyed or found useful. Several of these are adaptations of the novels I have mentioned earlier. Trapped A TV detective series created by Iceland’s foremost director, Baltasar Kormákur. It is set in a village in the East Fjords, cut off by snow. A body is found, the weekly ferry from Denmark is suspected, and the burly local police chief Andri investigates. Very good. The Valhalla Murders A classic police detective TV series. A succession of murders are linked to a children’s home - Valhalla. Kata must solve the crimes, with the help of an enigmatic Icelandic expat just back from Oslo. Beautiful images of Reykjavík in the snow and really quite a lot of blood. Woman at War My favourite Icelandic film. A choir conductor named Halla is an eco-terrorist, destroying power lines supplying an aluminium plant, all the time watched by three musicians who p...

  If you want to understand Iceland you need to read the sagas. But which ones – there are loads of them? These are the ones I enjoyed the most. It is well worth paying for a good translation - here the Penguin Classics brand earns its reputation for reliability. Penguin publishes a 700-page compendium of about thirty of them, entitled The Sagas of the Icelanders . Njal’s Saga. The longest and best. A legal thriller. The hero is Njál, a canny lawyer who tries and fails to mediate between families bearing grudges. Egil’s Saga. Egil was a great warrior with a bad temper and a flair for poetry. The Laxdaela Saga. A love triangle between three inhabitants of Breidafjördur: Gudrun, Kjartan and Bolli. Much blood is shed. Gudrun is one of the most fascinating characters in the sagas: don't mess with her. Grettir’s Saga. Grettir is an outlaw with a bad temper who fights humans and the undead. Eyrbyggja Saga or The Saga of the People of Eyri. The quarrels of various families in Snaefellsnes...

  Last week I wrote about some of the non-fiction books I have read over the years to understand Iceland better. This week I’m looking at fiction and poetry. I’m excluding crime novels from this list since I discussed those earlier . Also, I include a book ‘From the Reading Pile’, which I haven’t got to yet but which seem worth a look. Let me know in the comments section what other books should be added to the reading pile. I have been posting at the rate of one blog post every four weeks, but I think these Sources on Iceland posts should come out closer to each other than that, so I have published this second one only one week after the first. Fiction (Non-Crime) in Icelandic Independent People by Halldór Laxness (tr. J. A. Thompson).  The great Icelandic novel. Bjartur is a tough, independent, stubborn-as-hell farmer in Iceland at the beginning of the twentieth century. Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness (tr. Magnus Magnusson).  An emissary from the Bishop of I...

                                   Here is a more detailed list of the various sources I have used to learn about Iceland over the years. This list is far from comprehensive. Its obvious weakness is that it only lists books published in English, thereby omitting all kinds of books only available in Icelandic, as well as books about Iceland in German, French, Spanish and other languages. And I haven’t included every book I have read on the subject. Non-fiction books in this post: future posts will run through poetry, fiction, film and TV, magazines and the Internet. So, here goes: Non-Fiction Books Icelandic Saga by Magnus Magnusson.  A trip around Iceland, beautifully combining its landscape and its history. The Little Book of the Icelanders by Alda Sigmundsdóttir .  A little book about Iceland and its quirks by an Icelandic-Canadian writer with a ...

My last two blog posts described my researches in Greenland for my novel The Wanderer . Compared to Iceland, there are very few crime novels set in Greenland that are available in English. The only author I know of who writes these is t he British-Danish crime novelist Christoffer Petersen. His books feature the Greenlandic detective constable David Maratse and give a terrific picture of life – and death – in Greenland. Chris himself spent seven years living in Greenland and his knowledge and understanding of the country and its people shine through. They are fascinating novels, and great murder mysteries too. I asked Christoffer to post here about living in and writing about Greenland: Greenland. Where to start? I could begin by saying that Greenland was never on my radar. I grew up on Jack London stories, devouring them and everything else remotely connected to them. I developed a passion for the Arctic as a teenager, and it has consumed me for much of my life, guiding my decis...

  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.  By the way, the photograph above is of Eiriksfjord in Greenland from where Leif Eriksson and his wife Gudrid set sail for Vinland. The iceberg seems to be giving me the finger, I'm not sure why. 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 ...