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

  In my last blog post , I gave you a brief survey of the amazing crime writers working in Iceland at the moment. Where do my own books fit into this crowded field? Well, they are different. Right from the beginning, with my first novel, Where The Shadows Lie , I wanted to deal with how Iceland connected to the rest of the world, to examine issues that affect the globe beyond Iceland. This was partly because I thought this was a good approach to take, but mostly because that’s the way I have always written my books. My financial thrillers were about the international tribe that beavers away in international finance. The characters came from many different countries, and the novels were rarely stuck in one setting. I have never yet written an entire book set in England. This simply reflects my own dreams from an early age. I was brought up in a tiny village in Yorkshire. I wanted to escape to see the world. I had an uncle who was a naturalist in the bush in northern Australia,...

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 ...

  Vík is a pleasant little town crammed between the beautiful glacier of Mýrdal and the sea, at the southernmost point in Iceland halfway along the south coast.  It has no harbour, just a long stretch of black beach. To the east lies the Mýrdalssandur, the sandy desert created by Katla’s jökulhlaups. Spectacular cliffs rear up to the west, alongside beaches and dramatic rock formations. It’s well worth exploring these. You can see the rock formations from Vík: a line of tall rock spires just offshore, one of which is purported to be a petrified ship grabbed by a troll (of course). You can get closer to these stacks, driving out of town and inland around the headland to the black Reynisfjara beach. On one side of the beach a cluster of basalt columns rises like a giant church organ on cliffs crowded at nesting season with birds: kittiwakes, fulmars and puffins. Out to sea, the extraordinary rock formations slosh through the waves as if approaching the land fro...

Following my previous post on polar bears in Iceland , here is the first chapter of my novella The Polar Bear Killing. This was going to be the most important day of his life. He knew it. He could feel it. This would be the day when he left his mark on the world. Constable Halldór’s fingers tightened on the wheel of his police 4x4 as it hurtled through the fog towards the farm by the river where the polar bear had been sighted. The professional hunters in their souped-up Super Jeep were at least ten kilometres away. He would get there first. He would have only a few minutes to make the shot. The polar bear had been spotted on a beach six hours before by some fishermen, who had immediately called the coastguard. Polar bears were not native to Iceland, but once every couple of years one would pop up along the northern coastline, usually having ridden sea ice that had drifted eastwards from Greenland. Often they swam the last few miles to shore. By the time they reached Iceland, they were...

  In November 2016, I travelled to Saudárkrókur, in the north of Iceland, researching my book The Wanderer . As is my habit, I dropped into the local police station to speak to the chief constable. On his wall, I couldn’t help noticing a photograph of a polar bear charging down a hill. The bear had arrived on Iceland’s shores eight years earlier. It had first been spotted by a farmer’s daughter, who was in the sheep shed when she heard her dog barking and running across a field towards a bear, which was busy eating eider ducks’ eggs. The dog was rescued, the alarm was raised and all hell broke loose. Vets from Denmark were summoned with tranquillizer guns and a cage, but the bear was hungry and it was dangerous. And no one could see it. The weather had turned foggy, and a hungry predator was on the loose. People from all over Iceland drove towards Saudárkrókur to see the bear. It was spotted by a main road, and a crowd of fifty to sixty people gathered to watch.  The ...

  When you are describing a landscape, it is important to describe movement. Things that move bring a scene alive. And the things that move most obviously in Iceland are birds. These aren’t birds that sit quietly waiting to be ticked off birdwatchers’ lists. These are birds that do things. The most common bird in Iceland is the puffin, which looks like a cross between a penguin and a parrot but can both fly and swim. The Icelandic word for them is lundi , but they also go by the rather lovely nickname prófastur , which means ‘provost’ or ‘dean’. They live in burrows, often on cliff faces, in large communities. They arrive in Iceland to nest in April or May. Puffin is frequently found on the menu in Icelandic restaurants - it’s tasty if cooked well.  One of the largest colonies in Iceland is on the Westman Island of Heimaey. In August the eggs hatch, and the baby puffins, known as pufflings, waddle forth. These are extremely cute: grey and fluffy and a little clueless...

Time for another guest blog.  This one is from Jónína Léosdóttir, an Icelandic novelist who has turned to crime, and the wife of a former Prime Minister of Iceland.  Life changed dramatically when my wife, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, became Prime Minister of Iceland at the beginning of 2009. But not in a particularly good way for me, personally. You might think that being married to a PM must be glamorous and fun, even in a small country like ours. At least some of the time? Well, that might be true in ordinary times (if, indeed, there is such a thing as “ordinary times”), but that is definitely not the case when a country’s economic situation is extremely perilous and the International Monetary Fund is breathing down your neck.  The biggest and most immediate change in our household was that my spouse more or less disappeared from home, often spending twelve to fourteen hours a day at work. And when she was home, she was either on the phone, reading through stacks of papers...