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

  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...