”The tension between the armchair and adventure, between security and possibility, lies at the heart of Verne, as of his age--an age of scientific, te”The tension between the armchair and adventure, between security and possibility, lies at the heart of Verne, as of his age--an age of scientific, technical , industrial, colonial expansion, but also of questioning and reverie...The template of Verne’s great novels [is] a fusing of myth and the real; a new, modern, awestruck apprehension of the manmade and the natural; a dream--yet sometimes nightmare--of the possibilities of mankind, technology and the sublime.” ---From the introduction by Tim Farrant
As I was reading Journey to the Center of the Earth, I kept thinking to myself about those Victorian Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and Europeans of all stripes, who were feeling the thrill of adventure as they sat in their favorite reading chairs and cracked open the latest scientific thriller from Jules Verne. This particular book was first published in 1864. The Civil War in America was still raging to its bloody conclusion, and I’m sure there were many Americans of means who couldn’t wait to escape to wherever Jules Verne was willing to take them.
The Victorian age was an age of discovery. Men were tramping to the deepest heart of Africa, to the highest peaks in Tibet, and courting death in the Sahara Desert, all in an attempt to be the first to discover something. Nothing, of course, existed until a white man laid eyes on it. These days, nothing has been seen unless one has taken a selfie with it. Believe me, the great Victorian explorers would have loved to travel with an iPhone X to faithfully record all of their feats of valor and chronicle the dark mysteries they unraveled.
No one better exemplifies the Victorian explorer than the radical geologist, Dr. Otto Lidenbrock, who suffers strongly from an incurable case of bibliomania. He has discovered a pamphlet, hidden within another wonderful literary acquisition, a runic text written by an Icelandic writer that proposes that the center of the earth is not a fiery ball of flame, but a hidden world of wonders. He proposes to his nephew that they leave for Iceland immediately and begin a descent into the extinct volcano Snaefell. Axel, a much more cautious person than his uncle, would much rather laze about in his uncle’s study, sucking on his hookah and contemplating exactly how he is going to win the permanent affections of his uncle’s beautiful, young ward, Gräuben.
Of course, if his uncle dashes off to Iceland and becomes incinerated in the fiery hells of the Earth, it will hardly endear himself to the young lady.
Axel soon finds himself reluctantly caught up in his uncle’s mad adventure. With the help of their Icelandic guide, they descend into what Axel feels will be certain death.
Jules Verne writes with verve: ”The rain is like a roaring cataract between us and the horizons to which we are madly rushing. But before it reaches us, the cloud curtain tears apart and reveals the boiling sea; and now the electricity, disengaged by the chemical action in the upper cloudations; networks of vivid lightnings; ceaseless detonations; masses of incandescent vapour; hailstones, like a fiery shower, rattling among our tools and firearms. The heaving waves look like craters full of interior fire, every crevice darting a little tongue of flame.”
What made Verne so popular with readers during the later part of the 19th century was his gift for blending known facts with his very plausible flights of fancy. He must have subscribed to every scientific journal available at the time, and any article could prove to be the basis for his next book. The plausibility is such a key element because the armchair traveler he was taking along with him must be able to see himself in the midst of the action. A grocer dreaming of a life beyond potatoes and tomatoes, too, could descend into the bowels of the earth and hopefully return with a tale worth telling.
Next book in this Everyman’s collection is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, one of my all time favorite Verne stories. I will definitely be rereading that one.
The death of Elias Freysson is the centerpiece of a convoluted plot that will reveal deeply buried fears of all ”Next time I’ll teach you how to die!”
The death of Elias Freysson is the centerpiece of a convoluted plot that will reveal deeply buried fears of all those involved. On the surface, it seems like a nonsensical murder. Why would someone want to kill Elias Freysson? He helped run a charity organization, and people who do things like that generally aren’t murder victims. The theory is even floated that he was not the intended target, but merely a man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As Ari Thor Arason and his boss Tomas interview the people who knew Freysson, they start to discover that there are inconsistencies in the character of the man. He has secrets, and they must find out what exactly those secrets are if they ever hope to catch the person who killed him.
Tomas gives Ari the investigation to run, but he can’t help instructing the lad in the finer points, especially when interviewing the locals. Tomas knows these people, and Ari is still the outsider from Reykjavik. Ari is going to run the investigation his way, not exactly winning friends and influencing people in the process.
All the characters in this novel are distracted by things beyond the parameters of the case.
Tomas is pining for his wife, who has moved to Reykjavik to take advantage of an opportunity. He loves living in Siglufjordur, but he loves his wife more. He really wants Ari to become the police officer he wants him to be, so he can leave the town in safe hands.
Ari is in love with a medical student named Kristin, a girl he started seeing while still in Reykjavik, but due to distance and a series of miscommunications, they have drifted apart. Even as Ari searches for a killer, he is also obsessing about what she is doing and who she is doing it with.
Hlynur is the third police officer in Siglufjordur, and he has been relegated to the office due to erratic behavior. He keeps getting threatening emails that harken back to a mistake in his youth. Guilt is crippling his ability to function well with the rest of his life.
Isrun is the investigative reporter from Reykjavik who has come North to investigate the murder of Freysson. Murder is rather uncommon in Iceland, and she needs a great story to salvage her sagging career. Her motivations go beyond just the story, and as she begins to unspool the nuances of the story she also begins to unravel.
Ragnar Jonasson is certainly a devotee of the school of Agatha Christie. This is his most mature outing with the depth he gives the characters as well as the puzzling aspects of the plot as the investigators try to discover the true nature of the victim so they can find the killer. Jonasson does such a good job conveying the claustrophobia Ari is frequently overwhelmed by, from the mountains looming over their small town to the days and days of fog and cloud cover that compress his world into such small apertures. The plot is deftly revealed, keeping the reader on the hook until the final pieces fall into place. Many readers have said this is their favorite Jonasson so far. I certainly understand why.
This is actually the second book in the series, but for some reason the American publishers published the third book in the series second. It was a bit jarring to read Nightblind before Blackout. I would suggest reading Snowblind first, then Blackout, and finally Nightblind. If you are caught out as I was, have no fear, the books can stand alone. So if you need a dash of a read to feed your Nordic Noir craving, Jonasson’s books are perfect snowy afternoon reads.
”Gunnar got ready to ride to the Thing, and before he left he spoke to Hallgerd: ‘Behave yourself while I’m away and don’t show your bad temper where ”Gunnar got ready to ride to the Thing, and before he left he spoke to Hallgerd: ‘Behave yourself while I’m away and don’t show your bad temper where my friends are concerned.’
‘The trolls take your friend,’ she said.
Gunnar rode to the Thing and saw that it was no good talking to her.”
The events of Njal’s Saga took place between 960 and 1020 in Icelandic society and were written about in the thirteenth century. What was so unexpected for me was to discover, in such an ancient culture, the power that women had in, what I assumed was, a patriarchal society. Before I started reading Icelandic sagas, I had the image in my mind of the stereotypical, he-man, Viking Icelander, who ruled his home with an iron fist. That was not the case at all.
Hallgerd was famous to scholars of the sagas because she was such a diabolical character. She took any slight against her honor very seriously, meddled in others affairs without fear of impunity, manipulated, connived, and ultimately cost seven men their lives in a feud with Bergthora, the wife of Gunnar’s friend Njal. There was an inordinate amount of goading by women of their husbands in the sagas to push men into conflicts to defend family honor. The women, for the most part, did not really come off that well. They were depicted as shallow, petty, and quite willing to start an all out blood war over some perceived insult, even if the slight was unintended.
If a man did raise his hand to his wife, he risked having her burly male relatives appearing on his threshold to give him an attitude adjustment.
Most disagreements between men, some of them caused by women, were settled at a gathering called Althing. Men would get together and discuss who did what to whom and how much compensation was expected to be paid to make up for the loss of a life or of property. Again, surprisingly more civilized than anything I would have expected. Because of the alliances between people, either through blood or marriage or friendship, blood feuds were taken seriously. If things were not settled amicably between families, all of Iceland could find themselves in a civil war.
In these sagas, there were several moments when things became very precarious. As Hallgerd and Bergthora sparred with one another and convinced either their relatives or men who worked for their husbands to kill someone from the other family, the possibility of a savage blood feud erupting became precariously plausible. If not for the peaceable nature of their husbands, even more lives would have been lost as these women conducted their own bloody chess match where the pawns were men’s lives. Njal and Gunnar kept passing the same bag of silver back and forth as compensation for the deaths of their kinsmen to keep the peace.
Njal was considered one of the wisest men in Iceland, but though many came to him for consul, including Gunnar, his own sons frequently avoided asking him for advice, which eventually led to disaster. ”’I’m not in their planning’ said Njal, ‘but I am seldom left out when their plans are good.’”
Gunnar was level headed and anticipated problems before they actually materialized, but found himself often unable to stop the consequences. He was so mild mannered, but once his ire was raised he could become a fierce and formidable warrior. I really grew to appreciate his character as his story was told.
Throughout the sagas were foreshadowings or prophecies of what the future would hold. When Thorvald, son of Osvif, decided to marry Hallgerd, yes that Hallgerd, the future wife of Gunnar, his father couldn’t help but feel the match would be a costly one for his son. ”’Her laughter doesn’t seem as good to me as it does to you,’ said Osvif, ‘and the proof of this will come later.’”
Indeed, it did.
Hallgerd had a couple of marriages before Gunnar and was known for being difficult to get along with, but she was beautiful, and men continued to be dazzled by her appearance and thought they could handle her conniving and manipulations.
Despite the very civilized manner with which compensation was handled in this society, there were still plenty of points in the saga where bloody conflict broke out, and there was much lopping of hands, arms, legs, and heads off. Skulls were split. Torsos were skewered. Scars were made. One of my favorites was when:
”’This is the first time I have laughed since you killed Thrain.’
Skarphedin said, ‘Then here’s something to remember him by.’ (Terminatoresque)
He took from his purse one of the molars he had hacked out of Thrain and threw it at Gunnar’s eye [different Gunnar from the main character] and knocked it out onto his cheek. Gunnar then fell off the roof.”
Or how about this encounter with THE Gunnar.
”Gunnar saw a red tunic at the window and he made a thrust with his halberd and hit Thorgrim in the waist. The Norwegian lost his grip on his shield, his feet slipped and he fell off the roof and then walked to where Gizur and the others were sitting on the ground.
Gizur looked at him and spoke: ‘Well is Gunnar at home?’
Thorgrim answered, ‘Find that out for yourselves, but I’ve found out one thing--that his halberd’s at home.’
Then he fell down dead.”
I’ve heard that some people find these sagas tough to read. Within a few pages, I found a rhythm with the way the stories were told and within a few chapters I was caught up in the lives of Gunnar and Njal. The introduction was a great prep for reading the sagas and provided me with insights that helped me enjoy my reading even more. There were many creatively described, bloodthirsty moments as well as some detailed legal proceedings that confirmed for me the importance of laws to balance the scales between the strongest and the weakest. This Icelandic culture around 1000 AD was a society trying to evolve away from their bloody, barbaric past and move toward a civilisation where every life was precious, and the arts could be appreciated as much as the glitter of a sharp sword blade.
”’I believed it all. The story that we were all financial geniuses, younger and quicker and smarter than the others. That we were the Viking Raiders o”’I believed it all. The story that we were all financial geniuses, younger and quicker and smarter than the others. That we were the Viking Raiders of the twenty-first century. That we took calculated risks and won. That the wealth was here to stay. That this was just the beginning of the prosperity, not the end.’
‘I was wrong.’”
I’ve been around for many bubbles, the tech bubble, the housing bubble, and numerous stock bubbles. The tech bubble was the hardest one for me because I felt like an idiot not jumping in on the opportunities that were coming my way. I had nightmares that my future grandkids would be talking about what a moron I was not to make the family rich when the opportunity was so ripe. One of my rules has always been to never invest in anything that I don’t understand. It doesn’t always work to invest in what I do know, but usually if it comes apart and I lose money, at least I understand why it didn’t work. What I couldn’t understand about the tech boom was all the money flowing into investing, but there was so little money coming back in revenue. It smelled like a three day old fish to me. Certainly, there were people who got rich off the tech boom, but there were many more who lost more than they could afford.
I was buying property during the housing boom because money was so easy to get. Many people were buying their first homes or buying a bigger home, but unfortunately, most of them were opting for variable rate interest loans that allowed them to have a smaller payment in the beginning, but they did not seem to understand that as interest rates went up so would their payment...immediately. The housing bubble was born. I, of course, do not trust banks or interest rates any further than I can throw Shaquille O’Neal. All the property I bought was put on a fixed interest rate. I survived the housing bubble because I was conservative and careful.
So I understand the fever that took over the Icelandic people that lead to such a devastating financial crash in 2009. You see your friend put in some money and triple his investment. Even though you don’t exactly trust the situation, you start to feel stupid not being involved. Nobody wants to find themselves poor when everyone around them is getting rich.
Those young, bright Icelandic bankers thought it would never end. There is certainly money to be made in a boom. The trick is to figure out when the boom will bust and pull your money before the crash. When you double down and double down again and again, eventually the market will catch you with your tighty whities flapping in the wind. ”But you can’t just blame the bankers. All of us Icelanders have to ask ourselves what we were doing borrowing money we could never repay. And we’re just going to have to pay it all back.” Greed is a difficult disease of the mind to control; ask the Dutch tulip investors in 1637.
Magnus Jonson, an Icelandic born American from Boston, is investigating the murders of several prominent bankers who were instrumental in creating the financial disintegration of Iceland. The Pots and Pans Revolution with “anarchists” rising up to drive the Icelandic government out of office created some strife. It also allowed like minded people to meet. What absolutely flabbergasted me was, during the heat of the upheaval, normal Icelandic citizens stood between the police and the anarchists trying to calm the situation down. History is a vast ocean of occurrences, so I’m sure it has happened before, but I’ve never heard of people standing between rioters and police. There is something so civilized about average people standing up in a situation like that and being a voice of reason.
Kudos, Iceland.
Magnus is dealing with issues involving his beautiful artistic girlfriend, Ingilief, who is encouraging him to reconnect with his family, but his grandfather, Hallgrimur, is a hard and bitter man, and there are no golden memories associated from the time Magnus was living with him. Magnus is also unofficially investigating the murder of his father, Ragnar, and the more he finds out about the history of his family, the more he starts to believe that someone in the family could have been responsible. Ingilief is a handful. ”Since his youth he had been an avid reader of the Icelandic sagas, the tales of medieval revenge and daring. There were heroes and cowards in those stories, seekers of justice and hiders from it, and Magnus saw himself as one of the heroes. He smiled to himself. There were also women urging their men-folk to get off their asses and go avenge the family honour. Women like Ingilief.”
I’ve started adding Icelandic Sagas to my reading list, and they are frankly addictive. I started Njal’s Sagathe other day thinking I would just read a few pages to get an idea of what it was going to be like and read 50 pages.
This book moves between the 1930s, 2009, 2010 as events from the past are still influencing Magnus’s present. Michael Ridpath explains Kreppa, and the action takes Magnus outside of Reykjavik so that the reader can experience those beautiful, strange landscapes and the unusual, architectural structures that make up the history of Iceland.
”The snow, which had fallen a few days before, glowed a luminescent blue, except at the top of the far mountains where the rising sun painted it red. He could still see the dark shapes of the twisted rocky waves of Berserkjahraun. The warmth of the lava stone meant that the snow always melted there first.”
I love the way Ridpath shows the influence that ancient Sagas still have on Icelandic people and especially on Magnus, who when time allows will dip into a saga to relieve stress and focus his thoughts elsewhere so his mind will be refreshed for concentrating on the case. I’ve really enjoyed the first two forays into the Fire & Ice series and will definitely be reading more.
”At last they gave me a pencil and a notebook. It’s an old yellow pencil, badly sharpened, and an old notebook that someone has already used, the first”At last they gave me a pencil and a notebook. It’s an old yellow pencil, badly sharpened, and an old notebook that someone has already used, the first few pages untidily ripped out. Had someone else already tried to put into words their difficulties and their helplessness, just as I’m doing? Maybe there were some pretty doodles there, the unchanging view of the back garden rendered in artistic form, if that could be done. Somethings are so grey and cold that no amount of colour on a page could ever bring them to life.”
We are back in Siglufjordur, Iceland, with Ari Thor. The events of Nightblind are five years after the events in Snowblind. A lot has changed. There is a book in between Snowblind and Nightblind called Blackout, which is due out August 28th, 2018. The American publisher must have liked the association between the book titles and decided to publish them out of order. I’m sure it all seemed perfectly logical at the time, whatever the reasoning was for having us read Nightblind before Blackout.
I will do my best to dance around the issues, especially for those who are waiting to read Blackout before Nightblind.
Publishers just never think about the hardships they put reviewers through.
I don’t know how many more books Ragnar Jonasson intends to write based in Siglufjordur, but frankly, if I were the people of that city, I might think about frog marching him out of town before he kills off a significant portion of this small town’s residents (1,206). It is well on its way to becoming the Cabot Cove, Maine, of Iceland. I’d be avoiding him like he was Typhoid Mary, for fear he would size me up to be his next victim in his upcoming book.
Speaking of Typhoid Mary.
Ari Thor is sick with the flu. When Ari gets a concerned call from the wife of his fellow and rival police officer Herjolfur, he has to go out even though he feels like he has been stampeded over by a herd of reindeer. Fear has pierced the fever fog of his ailment, giving him strength to continue looking for his collegue.
He finds him.
In a pool of blood.
Faint pulse.
This is Iceland, not America. People aren’t supposed to get shot here. The police aren’t even armed. This shooting is so unusual that it raises a national debate about whether there are too many registered guns in Iceland. People aren’t buying AR-15s in Iceland. They buy legitimate rifles/shotguns for hunting, not a weapon that is designed and made to kill people. I don’t want to get caught up in a gun debate. I just wanted to make the point that one police officer gets shot in Iceland, and it is a call for change.
It is puzzling, really. Who would want to shoot Herjolfur? He hasn’t been in town a long time. In fact, he gets the job that Ari Thor applied for, and he wins the job not on merit as much as for his high level connections in the police force.
As Ari sifts through the sparse evidence, trying to make sense out of volunteered information from a local drug dealer and eliminate irrelevant information, which seems to be most of what he is discovering, he is also fighting all kinds of issues beyond the scope of his job. ”Ari Thor’s patience was starting to wear thin, his tolerance levels eroded by long days, inadequate rest, an increasingly complex investigation, and the tension at home.” The stress increases when he establishes a connection between the mayor’s office and certain aspects of his investigation.
Why did Herjolfur call the mayor moments before he was gunned down?
Sprinkled between chapters, there are excerpts, like the one I started this review with, from the diary of a mental patient which adds a new wrinkle to the reader’s investigation that Ari Thor does not have access to until very late in the case.
Ragnar Jonasson has translated numerous Agatha Christie’s, and his time rendering the Dame into Icelandic has served him well. I’m on board for Blackout, when the opaque time between Snowblind and Nightblind will be made clear.
”The year 1066 was a convulsive and fateful year for the destiny of England and western Europe. It was the year that brought together in violent and m”The year 1066 was a convulsive and fateful year for the destiny of England and western Europe. It was the year that brought together in violent and mortal conflict the three greatest military leaders in Europe of their day---Harald of Norway, Harold of England, and William of Normandy; three powerful and ambitious men who had fought their way to authority in their respective countries and who now, in three weeks of terrible bloodshed in the autumn of 1066, were to fight to the death for the greatest prize of all: the throne of England.”
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Harold II, a detail from the Bayeux Tapestry.
As fascinating as those men of destiny are, the Icelandic writer of this tale, Snorri Sturluson, proves almost as fascinating.
”He was a man of astonishing contradictions: a man who fought and schemed all his life to become the most powerful chieftain in Iceland, yet who still found time to write some of the greatest masterpieces in Icelandic literature; a greedy, covetous man who was nonetheless capable of great generosity; a patriot so fascinated by the royal court of Norway that he could harbour secret thoughts of treason; a farmer who wanted to be an aristocrat, a prose-writer who wanted to be a poet, a scholar who cared more about owning property; a worldly, cultivated man who loved all the good things of life---wealth, women, wine, good company---yet who died a squalid, tragic death in the cellar of his own home.”
Those he had opposed send men with swords to his house, and five of them trap him in his cellar and run him through and through again. A loss to literature for sure, but in some ways a fitting end for a man who wrote about so many other great men of Norwegian history meeting a similar end at the point of sword or by the swoop of a battle axe. Snorri might have become so ensnared in his stories that he fell right in the middle of them.
This saga is of Harald Sigurdsson and his quest for power. He fights the Danes on numerous occasions. He thinks he has as much right to the Danish throne as he does to the one in Norway.
"Svein and Harald battled The two great war-leaders, Shieldless, shunning armour, Called for thrust and parry; Armies were locked in battle, Stones and arrows were flying, Sword-blades were dyed crimson; All around, doomed warriors Fell before the onslaught.”
He fights his own people.
”Einer of the flailing sword Will drive me from this country Unless I first persuade him To kiss my thin-lipped axe.”
He battles omens and creatures insidious.
”The ogress flaunts her crimson Shield as battle approaches; The troll-woman sees clearly The doom awaiting Harald. With greedy mouth she rends The flesh of fallen warriors; WIth frenzied hand she stains The wolf’s jaws crimson--- Wolf’s jaws red with blood.”
I’m a modern man, and I’ve got to say reading about this hideous creature raises the hair on the back of my neck and sends shivers down my spine, enough to curl my toes.
This of course all leads up to the famous battle at Stamford Bridge in England. Sensing an opportunity to take the throne of England, Harald of Norway decides to invade in that year of English invasions, 1066. Harald Godwinsson, or Harold II if you are English, has barely warmed the seat of his newly acquired throne when he has to lead an army into battle against those burly, bloodthirsty Northmen.”The closer the army came, the greater it grew, and their glittering weapons sparkled like a field of broken ice.”
The interesting thing about all of this is that most of us don’t know who Harald Sigurdsson is, but one could speculate if he had decided to delay his invasion by a few weeks, we may have known him as Harold the Conqueror, King of England. As it is, Harold II dispatches Harald and his army in a bloody battle that weakens the forces of Harold II. The English army then has to turn around in 19 days and fight William of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings.
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William of Normandy raising his helmet to show his troops he is still alive. Bayeux Tapestry.
What are the chances that King Harald of Norway and William of Normandy would decide to invade England in the same month?
I can remember, when I was about 12 years old, riding in the pickup with my Grandpa Harold Ives and mentioning to him that he was named after an English King. He looked at me like I had rocks rattling around in my head instead of little gray cells. Even if I couldn’t convince him, I knew it was true.
Needless to say, I will be reading and reviewing more Icelandic sagas in the very near future. In a time when few were educated, the Icelandic people considered knowledge essential to life. If they had not believed so, many of these sagas would have never made the transition from oral history to written history. ”The Icelanders...take great pleasure in learning and recording the history of all peoples, and they consider it just as meritorious to describe the exploits of others as to perform them themselves.”
”Now Sigurd rode away. His ornamented shield was plated with red gold and emblazoned with a dragon. Its top half was dark brown and its bottom half li”Now Sigurd rode away. His ornamented shield was plated with red gold and emblazoned with a dragon. Its top half was dark brown and its bottom half light red, and his helmet, saddle, and buffcoat were all marked in this way. He wore a mail coat of gold and all his weapons were ornamented with gold. In this way the dragon was illustrated on all of his arms, so that when he was seen, all who had heard the story would recognize him as the one who had killed the great dragon called Fafnir by the Vaerings.”
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Move over, St. George. Step aside, St. Michae. And save some of that ale and meat, Beowulf. For there is another dragon slayer in town, and his name is Sigurd. Most of us have heard of these other dragon slayers, but few have heard of Sigurd. Maybe more of us has heard of him by his German name Siegfried, from the tales of the Nibelungenlied. Some people might know the name of this hero from the composer Richard Wagner who drew from both the Icelandic and German sagas for inspiration while creating his grand musical dramas. Unless you are from one of the cold Nordic countries, you probably have not had much of an opportunity to hear about the exploits of the warrior Sigurd.
Sigurd is descended from the Volsung family, and let me tell you, this is one crazy, brutal, blood to the shoulder kind of family. Any perceived slight is a cause for violence; odds such as 10 to 1 or 100 to 1 are never calculated. More men just means more skulls to crack, more arms to lob off, and more spleens to split. A Volsung sword once unsheathed is a weapon that will not be put away without blood dripping from the tip.
A lot of these old sagas would be lost, except for the diligent interest and meticulous work shown by Icelandic writers. ”It is not by chance that in Scandinavia so much of the narrative material about the Volsungs was preserved in Iceland. Fortunately for posterity, writing became popular among the Icelanders in the thirteenth century, when interest in old tales was still strong. Almost all the Old Norse narrative material that has survived---whether myth, legend, saga, history, or poetry---is found in Icelandic manuscripts, which form the largest existing vernacular literature of the medieval West.”
After reading that, my mind just kind of goes KABLOOEY.
The tiny, sparsely populated, volcanic churning, bitter cold country of Iceland is where the Northern oral traditions were best preserved? Still to this day, Icelanders are intense readers who have a wonderful reading tradition that is a part of their Christmas holiday. It is no surprise that they are one of the most literate countries in the world. ”The Nordic countries dominated the top of the charts, with Finland in first place and Norway in second, and Iceland, Denmark and Sweden rounding out the top five. Switzerland followed in sixth, with the US in seventh, Canada in 11th, France in 12th and the UK in 17th place.”
”Sigmund had a much smaller force. A fierce battle commenced, and, although Sigmund was old, he fought hard and was always at the front of his men. Neither shield nor mail coat could withstand him, and again and again that day he went through the ranks of his enemies, and no one could foresee how it would end between them. Many a spear and arrow was cast in the air. Sigmund’s spaewomen (female spirits), however, shielded him so well that he remained unscathed, and no one could count how many men fell before him. Both his arms were bloody to the shoulder.”
You thought I was kidding about the bloody to the shoulder thing, didn’t you?
Sigmund has many rather bizarre encounters in his lifetime, including this French snogging action with a she-wolf. ”She licked his face all over with her tongue and then reached her tongue into his mouth. He did not lose his composure and bit into the wolf’s tongue. She jerked and pulled back hard, thrusting her feet against the trunk so that is split apart.”
Patooey...wolf slobbers!!
Behind all of these circumstances is that shifty, one-eyed bastard Odin who appears out of the mist to offer his “help” and then disappears into the mouth of the chaos he has left behind him.
There are numerous Lady Macbeth characters sprinkled throughout this saga. Women who are more ambitious and, in many ways, more vicious than their men. They goad their husbands/lovers into rash, usually violent actions. It goes well beyond Eve tempting Adam with an apple, as war or revenge are the usual objective. There is also a healthy dose of betrayal, jealousy, incest, sorcery, gore, greed, unrequited love, fratricide, and filicide. One shudder worthy moment was a mother serving a father wine in the skulls of his sons.
There are stories in this saga that would make Quentin Tarantino turn a paler shade of white.
Michael Ridpath’s intriguing Icelandic mystery Where the Shadows Lie turned me onto The Saga of the Volsungs which, now that I’ve read that story, has encouraged me to pursue even more ancient tales, such as Njal’s Saga, The Saga of Grettir the Strong, Egil’s Saga, The Vinland Sagas, The Nibelungenlied, The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, and The Sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok. These will, of course, lead to more sagas, and as I gain a working knowledge of these tales, my enjoyment of them will continue to grow as well.
”Some of his colleagues in the Church of Iceland might have a better understanding of God, but the pastor understood the devil, and in a land that lay”Some of his colleagues in the Church of Iceland might have a better understanding of God, but the pastor understood the devil, and in a land that lay under constant threat of earthquake, volcano or storm, where trolls and ghosts roamed the countryside, and where dark winters suffocated isolated communities in their cold grip, an understanding of the devil was important.”
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Gauker’s Saga, you say? I may have borrowed a few things from that.
An ancient document, a ring, and a letter from J. R. R. Tolkien are about to create a literary explosion that will rock the history and literary departments of every university, but will also send those legions of Lord of the Rings fans into orgasmic ecstasy at the thought of reading a source document that had a major influence on Tolkien when he created his Middle-earth.
Professor Agnar Haraldsson is translating this Icelandic tale with, I’m sure, trembling fingers and an elevated heart rate, for this is one of those moments in time when he knows his reputation as a scholar is going to grow tenfold as soon as he can release his findings to the world. This opportunity fell in his lap when a friend, a young woman named Ingileif, brought Gaukur’s Saga to him to translate and arrange to sell. The ancient tale is a secret her family has held for hundreds of years.
The dreams of fame that Agnar is just beginning to enjoy thinking about are cut short by MURDER. His murder.
Academic murder? Over a piece of parchment and the hope of finding the ring? Yes, that ring, PRECIOUS.
Meanwhile, Magnus Ragnarsson has problems of his own. He has exposed some crooked cops in Boston along with their connections with a drug gang. His life isn’t worth the price of a Sam Adams beer. For his protection, he is shipped off to Iceland. His father who was Icelandic taught Magnus the language. He doesn’t exactly blend, but the Icelandic police are glad to have his help solving this unusual murder.
They don’t let him have a gun. No police carry guns in Iceland. Unfortunately this is an inconceivable concept in the United States.
The first case he lands is to investigate the murder of Agnar Haraldsson, a case involving trolls, ghosts, and ancient murders. Despite his initial misgivings about the validity of anything he is being told by the people surrounding this murder, he is drawn in and soon finds his own beliefs in what is possible start to become more malleable. He begins reread The Lord of the Rings for potential clues.
How crazy is that?
And then there is this mystical ring. ”The links to The Lord of the Rings in Gaukur’s Saga were obvious, much stronger than the Saga of the Volsungs. For one thing, the ‘magic’ of the ring was more powerful and more specific. Although there was nothing about invisibility, the ring took over the character of its keeper, corrupting him and causing him to betray or even kill his friends. And it extended his life.”
One has to wonder, is this like Voodoo? The ring has no power over you unless you believe it does? Okay, so maybe Agnar Haraldsson was killed for something more than just a piece of ancient parchment, cool as it is. Certainly, many people would kill for the keys to eternal life.
”His fingers felt for the familiar round shape.
The ring.
He drew it out and pulled it on to the fourth finger of his right hand, where it fitted snugly. (He) had big hands, he had been a good handball player in his youth, yet the ring was not too tight. It had been made for the fingers of warriors.”
This novel is set against the backdrop of Iceland’s unworldly landscape. I truly felt like I’d fallen into some part of Middle-earth. ”Mist swirled around the pinnacles of twisted lava all about Magnus, odd grotesque shapes, volcanic gargoyles. Under his feet was black grit and chips of obsidian, rock melted into black glass deep within the earth and then spewed out on to the very spot where he stood.” Kreppa (economic crisis of 2008) has just taken a large crap all over the Icelandic economy, and everyone is worried about the heavy debt loads they accumulated when times were good, but despite these worries, the people of Iceland are fiercely proud of their country and are so willing to work hard to bring their economy back to life.
They are a country of dedicated readers, as well. My kind of people!
Can Magnus make the adjustments to being trapped between two cultures? Can he unravel the mist shrouded mysteries of this academic murder? Can he stay hidden from his enemies in Boston? Can he stay out of the bed of the beautiful murder suspect, Ingileif? When in Iceland, right? Can he stop spending his evenings getting plowed in the Grand Rokk? Can he find the answers he seeks within his own family, about his father and his connection to Iceland?
Magnus is caught up in a mystery that will challenge his own conceptions of where the outer reaches of reality end and where legend and myth begin. The literary elements, the sagas, and the spectacular landscape certainly added to my enjoyment of this book. I’ve already ordered the second book. I can’t wait to see what lava strewn path Michael Ridpath takes me down next.
”She lay in the middle of the garden, like a snow angel.
From a distance she appeared peaceful.
Her arms splayed from her sides. She wore a faded pair o”She lay in the middle of the garden, like a snow angel.
From a distance she appeared peaceful.
Her arms splayed from her sides. She wore a faded pair of jeans and was naked from the waist up, her long hair around her like a coronet in the snow; snow that shouldn’t be that shade of red.
A pool of blood had formed around her.
Her skin seemed to be paling alarmingly fast, taking on the colour of marble, as if in response to the striking crimson that surrounded her.
Her lips were blue. Her shallow breath came fast.
She seemed to be looking up into the dark heavens.
One of the more intriguing exchanges in a movie full of great lines is the interaction between Griffin Mills, played by Tim Robbins, and June Gudmundsdottir, played by Greta Scacchi, in one of my favorite movies, The Player.
”’It's very green, actually.’
‘Really?’
‘I thought that was Greenland.’
‘No, Greenland's very icy. Iceland's very green. They switched names to fool the Vikings who tried to steal their women.’”
I’m always perking up my ears about anything regarding Iceland. There is something so compelling about an island with so much snow and so much volcanic heat beneath. The first Icelandic author I found was Arnaldur Indriðason and have enjoyed his books immensely. Where Indriðason is more gritty and hardboiled, Ragnar Jonasson is definitely more in the classic British mystery vein that Dame Agatha Christie dominated for most of her career. Jonasson has translated 14 Christie books into Icelandic, and he was certainly doing more than just translating. He was learning the craft.
Ari Thor quit his studies in theology and philosophy to take up the study of law enforcement. An odd move that was baffling to most of his friends. He has a girlfriend named Kristin who is studying to become a doctor. She has just moved into his flat in Reykjavik when he gets an offer of a job in Siglufjordur, which is clear on the opposite side of the island in the northern part of the country. A town that frequently becomes snowed in for the winter.
He takes the job without talking to his pretty, committed, soon to be a doctor making lots of money girlfriend. It seems hasty, as if he really does want to escape to some remote area to get away from….
Siglufjordur is like most small towns all over the world. He will never be accepted as one of them. The best he can hope for is that they learn to like him and tolerate him.
It snows so much that it becomes oppressive. He can’t stop thinking about the snow, even when he is sleeping. He needs reassurance from Kristin even more, but she has become more distant and evasive as the pressure of her classes takes more and more of her time. Ari is not happy, but really there is no one to blame but himself.
And then the national treasure of Iceland, Hrolfur Kristjansson, the writer of the masterpiece North of the Hills, falls down a flight of stairs and dies. He was old. He had been drinking. He was agitated by an argument with one of his friends.
A tragic accident for sure. Well, maybe.
Then a young woman is brutally attacked and left in the snow to die. Suddenly, this small community has become very interesting. Ari sifts through the convoluted truths and, in the process, learns more about all the people surrounding the events than he really wants to know. The victims prove the most intriguing of all. What really happened to that woman and why? And who really is Hrolfur? As the layers are peeled back, the new information creates more questions than answers.
Now Ari is no Hercule Poirot. The little gray cells are not fully developed. Nor is he a Miss Marple, but he makes up for his lack of experience with determination and a tenacious desire to learn the truth, no matter how many broken threads of inquiry he encounters along the way. To make things more complicated for him, he is starting to have feelings for a girl there in Siglufjordur named Ugla.
My brain instantly translates that to Ugly, but she is far from that. Not only is she pretty, but she is also hyper intelligent, and most importantly of all, she is there.
As a final nod to Christie, Ari brings all the suspects together at the end of the novel for the grand reveal.
I enjoyed the small town in the North of Iceland. It seems like the perfect place to get a lot of reading done. The weather keeps people buttoned up, and the frequent avalanches seal off the town from the rest of the world. Nature imposed isolation is sometimes the only way for people to find any peace anymore. I’m rating the book 3.5 stars, but I’ll give Jonasson a bump to 4 instead of rounding down to 3. Call it half a star on account. I’m looking forward to reading his next foray because I really want to see this earnest young man grow into the detective I know he can be.
”’He went away, but all the same...he’ll never go away,’ she said with a sad smile playing across her lips.
‘I know,’ Erlendur said. ‘I know what you m”’He went away, but all the same...he’ll never go away,’ she said with a sad smile playing across her lips.
‘I know,’ Erlendur said. ‘I know what you mean.’”
After an earthquake, a lake begins to disappear, revealing a skeleton with Cold War Russian technology wrapped around the neck to help it sink to the bottom of the lake bed and stay there. The pathologists determine that the skeleton is male and has been there since the 1960s. The Icelandic police department pulls all the missing person files from that era and begins interviewing the families of the missing.
I hadn’t really thought about the implications on the families of missing people when a body is found, even decades later. There is one family whose son left a suicide note and just disappeared off the face of the planet, so every time there is a body found, they are called upon for details, and this has been going on for several decades. He “killed” himself because a girl he liked started dating his best friend. Yes, unbelievably painful, and young people certainly feel the pain more deeply, and think their life will never be any different than it is right now. His parent’s are long passed the grieving stages, and now are very angry and hurt that he would do this this to himself and them. With such a rash act, he changed the track of their life, made the sweet memories of him bitter, and left them wondering for the rest of their lives if there was anything they could have done different to make their son want to live. They can’t help feeling cheated. Anger, guilt, regret, and sadness weigh them down like the gravity around them has changed density.
And every time a body is found that vaguely fits the time period of his disappearance, everything is dredged back up again. The parents of the missing boy are versions of Prometheus chained to the rock of their son’s suicide waiting for the police to peck out their livers every few years.
Inspector Erlendur has a special interest in missing people. When he was very young, his father and his younger brother and he were out in the wilds of Iceland and became separated. The younger brother was never found. Every few years Erlendur will take a tent and treks the mountains and moors of the area of the disappearance looking for any sign of his brother, bones or a piece of jacket or a shoe. Maybe Erlender has a part of him that still hopes that his brother will walk out of the mist of time and return to him. Without a body, there is no closure, and some people are haunted by irrational hope for the rest of their lives.
Erlander’s daughter Eva believes her father is her missing person. He was an indifferent father. A man who seeks solace in searching for missing people rather than in the comfort of a family. Lots of kids wish their parents were someone else, someone they want them to be, even parents who try to be good parents still aren’t who their kids want them to be. Eva acts out, takes drugs, hits a cop who was a friend of her father. She will do anything to get his attention. Erlander is not a terrible father. He is just not a great father.
The skeleton in the lake takes us back to the Cold War and to Leipzig in Eastern Germany, where many bright Icelandic students went to study and to become socialists. The novel switches in time between the 1960s and to Erlander’s investigation in the present day. It was interesting for me to learn this connection between Eastern Germany and Iceland. It doesn’t take long for some of the students to learn that socialism on paper and socialism in practice are two different things. ”I always felt that the socialism they practiced in East Germany was a kind of sequel to Nazism. This time they were under the Russian heel, of course, but I pretty quickly got the feeling that socialism in East Germany was essentially just another kind of Nazism.”
I’m always surprised at the depth of these mysteries by Arnaldur Indridason. The books are about much more than the case. Erlendur is a tortured soul, but he is comfortable with it. He wears his unhappiness, his discontent, like it is a second skin. ”He much preferred shorter days and pitch darkness to perpetual sunshine and the endless light it radiated. He did not know himself the reason for it. Did not know why he felt better in dark winters than during bright summers.” I adore sunshine. When the sun is out, it invades my most darkest thoughts and wiggles into my most deepest depressions, shining light and driving away the storm clouds of despair. Thoughts of such nature make Erlendur uncomfortable. He prefers to nurse his frustrations and his grievances. He went missing at the same time his brother did. He was found, but not completely found. It wouldn’t be right to come back without him.
I have many Erlendur novels left to read, but I was inspired to pull a novel of Iceland from the shelf by the incredible run in the UEFA Euro championships this year by the Icelandic team. I couldn’t help identifying with a bunch of kids who, when they weren’t working on the farm, kicked a football around. They are a small nation with only 331,872 residents by the latest Icelandic population clock reading. When they eliminated England’s team, one of the best financed in the world, they shocked the football world. There will be statues erected for these Vikings, each with a name ending in -son.
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