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

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 ...