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

  I needed someone to speak to about sagas. I found a lecturer in Icelandic Literature, Thorsteinn.    His office was on the top floor of the old building of the University of Iceland. Rather unsettlingly, this reminded me a little of my trip to Berlin to research my 1930s novel: it had a touch of the Nazi Gothic about it. Thorsteinn’s office was small and academic, with the exception of an unexplained Barbie doll on the top shelf. Nothing in Iceland is ever completely serious. There was a view over Reykjavík City Airport to Thingholt and the Hallgrímskirkja. Just in front of the university is a rather elegant statue of an early Icelandic academic, Saemundur the Wise , and a seal. Like many future Icelanders, Saemundur studied abroad, at the Sorbonne in Paris, specializing in the devil and black magic. In the eleventh century, travel from France to Iceland was tricky, so Saemundur did a deal with the devil, who promised to take the form of a seal and give him a lift home....

Reykjavík has plenty of good cafés, but my favourite is Mokka . It’s a few yards up Skólavördustígur (the Skola Street) on the left, in a building that used to be white but is now raspberry red. It is supposedly the oldest café in Reykjavík, founded in 1958 by an Icelander returning to Reykjavík from Naples where he had been studying music. The warmth and friendliness of the place hits you as soon as you walk in, subtly conveyed by the smell of coffee mixed with waffles and strawberry jam, the house speciality. It’s a small café with leather benches, booths and wood-panelled walls under yellow light. These are hung with pictures by Reykjavík artists that rotate monthly: abstracts, photographs, landscapes, all for sale. Often, the artist will be there too, willing to talk about their work. The staff are young, friendly and of course speak perfect English. I have often suggested Mokka as a place to meet my sources. It has a reputation as a hangout for artists, writers and intellectual...

  I was looking for two things from my police contact Páll: the details of how the police would undertake an investigation from the discovery of the body to the eventual conviction of the murderer, and what difference Magnus would notice to homicide investigations back home.   Iceland's police officers Icelandic police have a friendly, almost cuddly image, especially when compared to their American counterparts. They have become experts at Instagram and Facebook, on which they rescue kittens and perform weird dances. It is an entirely different experience being stopped by an Icelandic traffic cop with her helpful smile and bobbing blonde ponytail, than by a shaven-headed American policeman with peak cap, sunglasses, jackboots, a gun wobbling at his hip and that special unsmiling look that asserts authority and, occasionally, fear. The pots-and-pans protests In 2009, the Icelandic police lost their weekend leave when they spent every Saturday protecting Parliament during the p...

  If you have been enjoying this blog over the last few months, you may want to buy my new book Writing in Ice: A Crime Writer’s Guide to Iceland .   It’s a compilation of the posts I have already published, plus lots more.   It’s an account of how I researched Iceland for a detective series, with, I hope, lots of useful information for anyone who is planning to visit the country.   It’s not entirely serious. Lilja Sigurdardóttir, one of Iceland’s top crime writers, said Writing in Ice is “the guide to Iceland I have most enjoyed” and that it is “so knowledgeable and humorous, yet kind toward our country’s quirkiness.”   Maybe she’s just being nice, but it made me happy.   Mike Ripley of Shots Magazine describes it thus: “Essentially a love letter to the geography, people and sagas of Iceland, Ridpath’s memoir not only charts his research into the Icelandic Psyche but also provides a road map for planning. plotting and writing a crime novel set in a foreig...

   A major area of difference between crime in Iceland and crime in the US that Magnus would notice immediately is firearms. It turns out there are loads of guns in Iceland; you guessed it, t he country has the highest per-capita gun ownership in the world . But these are entirely for hunting: handguns and assault rifles are banned. Guns are rarely used in crimes, and the police are unarmed. Unlike the police in the US. Guns in America Guns are really important to American policemen. The bad guys are heavily armed: the police need guns to protect themselves and their colleagues. To research this series I read a fascinating book called  Into the Kill Zone  by David Klinger , which is a thorough analysis of what happens when American police officers shoot civilians.   We have seen in the news examples of this that are unjustified. But many times, police use their weapons in legitimate acts of self-defence. In tough areas they are aware that they might come under f...

I have decided to pull together these blog posts into a book, which will be published at the beginning of July. Like this blog, the title is Writing in Ice: A Crime Writer's Guide to Iceland .  The book includes the posts I have published here and more that I have already written.  You can pre-order the ebook or paperback from Amazon .  If you would like a signed copy, or one not sold by Amazon, you can order one from my local bookshop, Lutyens and Rubinstein in Notting Hill, London. By far my most important appointment on that first research trip to Reykjavík was with my police contact, Páll. Some very successful crime writers get by without worrying at all about police procedure — Agatha Christie springs to mind, but there are many other more modern examples. Others are obsessive, like Peter James. I had always aimed to get the details right in my financial thrillers, and I wanted to do the same in these Magnus mysteries if only to create as vivid a portrait as I coul...

  What you think of Grótta depends on the intersection of your mood and the weather.   If you are feeling tired or impatient and the wind is blowing and it's cold and raining and you can’t see for more than a hundred metres, then Grótta can be a bust. But when it is calm and still, and it is warm enough to sit and stare, and the sun is taking its sweet time to duck below the horizon, it is a special place.   The name Grótta refers to a tiny island at the tip of Seltjarnarnes, on which a lighthouse stands.   On the west side of this tip is a beach of black stones. At sunset, the sea shimmers in silver, gold, yellow, orange and even green as the sun creates a path heading westwards to the Atlantic and beyond (see photo above).   On a clear day, the snowy cone of Snaefellsjökull shimmers far away to the north. Sleek black cormorants slip in and out of the water and multicoloured ducks paddle about their business.   Terns wheel and dive, letting out their di...