This is a book to devour in enormous gulps. When you do come up for air, fill yourself with black tea and then settle back into your armchair, to be borne aloft once more. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent is a bittersweet and melancholy tale of a woman named Agnes Magnusdottir. Set in Iceland in…
Continue reading ➞ Book Review: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
This feel-good documentary is set in Reykjavík, Iceland on corner of Ásvallagata and Blómvallagata streets. Where there is a little unassuming grocery store called simply Kjötborg or Corner Shop. Two brothers own and run the local shop, which they inherited from their parents. This is the last bastion of stores like this, as many others…
Reave A long and low boundary wall or bank, found especially on Dartmoor and in Devon, mostly now sunk back into the landscape. Also, as a verb, to tear, split, divide or cleave. Rof/rifa An Icelandic word meaning to rip or tear something. Rof á landi refers to the rupture of the top soils of…
Just because I love cartography, here's a couple of remarkable Scandanavian medieval maps. Note the dominance of several kraken and sea monsters off the Norwegian coast and how each country is barely hanging on by a thread because of these menacing beasts. Here be magic, Vikings and mysterious beasts. Velleius Islandia by Abraham Ortellius (1603)…
Continue reading ➞ The Viking Imagination: Medieval Cartography of Scandinavia
Every picture tells a story: Into the unknowable
Beyond cutely frolicking through meadows in Iceland and Scandinavia, arctic foxes are also aiding the local ecological balance in the way they keep house underground. Their dens are often a century old and topped with lush gardens and dune grass. The domains of arctic foxes are a splash of colour in an otherwise dull brown…
Continue reading ➞ Arctic foxes are the artisans of their own vibrant gardens
In this series of podcasts, Australian writer and broadcaster Richard Fidler and his friend, Icelandic writer Kári Gíslason travel to Iceland to regail us with the stories of the ancient Vikings; tales of blood feuds, dangerous women, fugitives and warrior poets. They also go to the windswept country to discover more about Kari's own mysterious origins.…
Continue reading ➞ Medieval Icelandic Sagas: Tales of Blood Feuds, Dangerous Women and Warriors
