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

  Those of you who have read my recent novel, Whale Fjord , will have come across an unpleasant character named Neville Pybus-Smith, the head of British military intelligence in Iceland during the British occupation in 1940-41. Well, Pybus-Smith is loosely based on a real character named Major Wise. One of my most fortunate discoveries when researching Whale Fjord, was an Icelander named Jökull Gíslason. Not only is Jökull one of Iceland's leading experts on the country's history in World War Two, he is also a police inspector. And helpful. The perfect source for me! He has written an excellent book, Iceland in World War II , which I referred to frequently while writing Whale Fjord . He also wrote a fascinating article, entitled  Spymasters , about the dodgy Major Wise. He has permitted me to reproduce it here. "Major Alfred Roy Wise was the British spymaster in Iceland. He is a confusing character, described by his subordinates as pleasant and amiable while he was c...

  My new Magnus novel is published! It's called Whale Fjord and is number 7 in the series after Death in Dalvik. Iceland 1940 . Britain invades Iceland. Lieutenant Tom Marks is a British officer tasked with defending Whale Fjord. He meets Kristín, a young widow from a nearby farm, who has a small son. Tom is smitten. Iceland 2023 . Inspector Magnus Ragnarsson is called to the shores of Whale Fjord where the skeletons of a man and a woman have been discovered, both shot with British wartime bullets. Magnus uncovers a web of anger and revenge that stretches back eighty years and forward to a shocking murder in Reykjavík. 'Magnus is a complex and totally compelling character, fitting perfectly into the bleak and intimidating settings of Ridpath’s Iceland.’ – New York Journal of Books The book will be available worldwide, in paperback or as an ebook through Kindle (only). The ebook price is £2.99/$3.99 for the next week or so, but will go up to £3.99/$5.99 after that. This is th...

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 summ...

The higher the latitude, the greater the difference between summer and winter. Iceland is only just below the Arctic Circle, so in midwinter it is dark nearly all the time. Daylight is only a few hours. In practice dawn turns into dusk at lunchtime.  As you can imagine, this has a depressing effect on locals. They go to work in the dark; they come home in the dark. It was even worse in the old days when most Icelanders lived on isolated farms. They essentially stayed indoors all winter in their living quarters above the animals whose heat kept them warm. They knitted, they read, they milked the cow, they moved hay about. They hibernated. Because of its proximity to the Arctic Circle, in theory, the sun is visible for a short period every day in Iceland, even at midwinter. But that is not true for the town of Ísafjördur in the West Fjords, which is wedged between high mountains. There they last see the sun on 16 November and it returns on 25 January. They have sólarkaffi - coffee ...