Unraveled

A Novel About a Meltdown

By Alda Sigmundsdóttir
Enska Textasmiðjan, 2013

Another book written by a blog-pal! This time it is a full-fledged novel by Alda Sigmundsdóttir whose blog, The Iceland Weather Report, was certainly the most accomplished Icelandic blog published in English. It reached its peak in influence during the Icelandic banking crisis of 2008. Alda found herself thrust upon the world stage, giving interviews and commentary to a wide variety of international media. I’ve followed her since 2004 and have referenced her work in numerous FITK posts. Alda has written three other books, all of which were well-received, I've read all of them except Icelandic Folk Legends, and some of those stories I’ve read on her blog.

That said, it was with not without some trepidation that I picked up this book. As I got into it, I soon discovered what I had suspected—it wasn’t the type of book I would usually read. It is a dysfunctional relationship novel played out over the background of the Icelandic financial meltdown. At times it could even be considered a “bodice-ripper.” The main character, Frida, is a free-spirited young Icelandic woman who ends up in a loveless marriage with the UK’s ambassador to Iceland (who is also hiding a couple of big secrets). Things are further complicated when Frida takes an interest in hunky Baldur, a former investment banker who she meets in the remote Westfjords.

Alda’s writing is clear and direct; her descriptions of Iceland and Reykjavík give this book some depth and shows how the people of Iceland were affected during the crisis of 2008. A good companion to this novel is her first book, Living Inside the Meltdown, as well as her exceptional blog posts of 2008-2009.  In contrast, the main character, Frida, is somewhat shallow and her lovers are (except for the sex scenes) lightly drawn.

The book did hold my interest although Maria Alva Roff’s 88 was more to my tastes—a wild ride covering some of the same territory but with a vastly different approach. Auður Ösp's earlier blogs (non-fiction), while not polished, give an even more intimate look at modern Iceland. Each of these writers/bloggers captures facets of Icelandic life in their own way. Their collective charms must be working as I have remained a fan of their writing for ten years!

Mondays in Iceland - #59

The Little Book of Icelandic

by Alda Sigmundsdóttir

Yet another book was recently published by a blog-pal—the second in the same week!

Alda Sigmundsdóttir has created a mini-publishing empire with her books on Icelandic culture. Her latest is, like her other ones, quirky and hilarious. It is available on Amazon, and should be in most of the usual Icelandic outlets by now.  You can check them all out on her website.

I was engrossed, although perhaps not quite as much as the fellow on the cover was! Like Shoshanah's book, I was fortunate to have a small role in this book's genesis—I was a beta reader. It was perhaps the most fun I've ever had while "working."

Last October, when I was in Reykjavík, I saw her other books on display all over the city. This series of books is an excellent introduction to the wonderful Icelandic culture.  Some of her books have been translated into Dutch, French, Spanish, and German as well:

Alda Among the Hidden People

The Little Book of the Hidden People:
Twenty stories of elves from Icelandic folklore
by Alda Sigmundsdóttir

This short eBook from Alda is another in her continuing series of informal yet almost scholarly works about Icelandic culture.  As with her previous efforts, the only fault I can find with any of them is that I'm finished too quickly.

This book is a welcome respite from “cute” and sanitized folk stories. There are lots of sexual escapades, some very peculiar Icelandic customs, as well as some touching tales of love, love ending in grief. Alda does a great job in filling in the background on the stories, some of which would be real ‘head-scratchers’ without her explanations.


UPDATE: It's now available on Amazon.

Insider Iceland

Alda Sigmundsdóttir has been a reliable source of information on Iceland for over a dozen years now. I’ve been following her Iceland Weather Report blog for just as long. It was a must-read during the 2008 kreppa and its aftermath, when her opinions were featured in numerous articles and even on BBC broadcasts!

Although her old blog is pretty much dormant, you can still get a glimpse of her activities at her FaceBook page. Alda has kept writing about Iceland and now heads her own mini-publishing empire. Although I’ve got most of her titles, and have even been a beta reader for her last two, it is still a thrill when I get one of her books in the mail, complete with Icelandic postmark and personal inscription:



This is the book I was looking for seventeen years ago when I first started visiting Iceland. It is concise, packed with information about Iceland and its current “tourism situation” as well as a rumination on what a tourist in Iceland can expect and how a tourist should behave to maximize his or her experience. This is a far cry from the usual guide book. If you are thinking about going to Iceland, get this book! As I intimated last December, the Icelandic coverage at FITK is diminishing, I’ve done it too long, things are changing there so fast that now I’m too far out of the loop and another trip back doesn’t seem likely. So I say hats off to Alda, for this labor of love, for keeping the dream of Iceland (and its sometimes bitter truths) alive. 

End of the Line?

Since starting this mess in April of 2004, it seems that I'm always saying goodbye. Bloggers just come and go- and blogging "relationships" have always been more like a pleasant chat with a stranger than a long-term commitment with a dear friend. That said, and although I had premonitions of its coming, the news of the recent decision of Alda Sigmundsdóttir to end her excellent blog The Iceland Weather Report was received here with sadness.

It may not be the end of the line as far as my interest in Icelandic bloggers goes, but it is truly the end of an era. Hers was the most informative, authoritative, and unquestionably the best blog from Iceland written in English. The site, along with its forum, will remain up, but her almost daily reports on a vast panorama of Icelandic topics will cease. This will be a big hole in my blog-world, while there are many good niche-sites about Iceland, and good personal ones, none of them (and indeed no blogs I read anywhere) could convey a person's life in its geo-socio-political contexts as well as Alda could.

I can understand why she's quit- she is an active professional, with family and other personal obligations, as well having to deal with the overall downturn in the Icelandic economy (as well as the comments of crack-pots!) It also seems pretty evident why she has kept it going as long as she did- she really loves Iceland, its people and culture, and that she thought that the rest of the world could appreciate it as well. It has been a rough couple of years for Iceland. Alda has been there through the worst of it, sparing nothing, she must be exhausted.

I certainly did appreciate her efforts; it was the only blog I've supported with monetary contributions, and it was always the first Icelandic blog I recommended to people interested in traveling to Iceland. It was also the only blog where I dropped my Professor Batty moniker and used my real name when commenting.

So. What else can I say? There is nothing, nothing except "thank you."

New Icelandic Author!

Just purchased Alda Sigmundsdóttir's new e-book, Living Inside The Meltdown, a collection of her interviews with people who have been affected by Iceland's ongoing financial crisis, sometimes referred to as the Kreppa. Alda's interview style is invisible, she lets the people speak for themselves, giving the reader a very personal view of how their lives have been changed. This is an extremely sensitive subject for the normally taciturn Icelanders to deal with, much less speak openly about. The thoughts of Haraldur Sigurðsson, a police officer, are almost unbearably heart-breaking in their sadness and candor. Tryggvi Hannesson, a 75 year old veteran of many prior Icelandic fiscal calamities, lets fly with a lengthy tirade, most of which I suspect is 100% accurate.

The others in the book have been and are being affected in different ways, but not without a few glimmers of hope- a return to more basic values, less materialism (or perhaps that's just a rationalization for not having money to spend) and more openness in what has been a very closed society.

You can order Alda's book through her website, The Iceland Weather Report. Her blog has been the best English language Icelandic website for many years; she has been my inspiration since 2004.

Alda on Performing Arts in Iceland

Harpa, Reykjavík, 2012

I've been a fan of the Icelandic performing arts for years and this short essay about a new Icelandic opera  (taken from Alda Sigmundsdóttir's Facebook page, 30 March 2014) eloquently sums up my impressions and then some:

Last night we went to see a new Icelandic opera called Ragnheiður, which has been getting rave reviews. Critics have literally been falling all over themselves with rapture. So I confess I was more than a little curious to see it, though not without apprehension, since I'm not a big opera fan and find few things worse than sitting through a lengthy theatrical performance when I'm bored out of my wits.
 
But the production totally lived up to the hype. And sitting there in the dark I had some thoughts.
 
1. Not for the first time I was filled with awe that this tiny nation - 320,000 people - are able to put on a production of such remarkable quality. We went to a Broadway show last summer that was substantially inferior to this. And this is not a one-off. Pretty much every theatrical production you see here in the professional theatres is of such a standard. It completely defies all logic.

2. It was brought home to me how essential the arts are to a nation's identity. This opera is about a very dramatic event in Iceland's history, and it is performed in Icelandic. Sitting in the audience you could FEEL the concentrated attention of all the people watching who connected on a very profound level with all that was going on. It spoke to them - to us. Granted, it would have spoken to anyone - the emotions, occurrences etc. were common to all humanity - but the context, clothing, setting, language, etc. were OURS. And people were crying all around me. Practically sobbing. I have never experienced that at the theatre before. In tear-jerk movies, yes, but never at the theatre.

3. I marvelled at the fact that certain political forces believe that the arts are a luxury, and pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things. They are not. Performances like the one I saw last night are the glue that hold a nation together. They nourish the finer sensibilities, like compassion, empathy and love, and they foster a sense of unity. They promote a healthy society, and any politician who does not see the value of that is seriously stupid. 

Alda's Iceland Update

From long-time FITK correspondent Alda Sigmundsdóttir comes this radio interview (produced by RÚV English) wherein she discusses the country’s current issues including cessation of whaling, housing, and the current tourism downturn and the recession that has occurred.

Year-end Wrap Up

2022 is nearly over.

Good riddance to bad rubbish? Or are there gems to be found in this landfill of a year?

The big story in 2022 is the same as the big story of 2020 and 2021 - Covid. It finally caught up with me (“I went to Iceland and all I brought home was a case of Covid”) and although I was over it in a week, the lingering effects of an ear infection induced deafness lasted over a month, the Weaver also succumbed to the virus. It was a time span which coincided with the birth of our first grandson (premature and is still in hospital). November was not a fun time at Flippist World Headquarters. 2022 was also the pits from a monetary standpoint—but I find it amusing that a 0.1% bank savings account rate outperformed my carefully-curated IRA investments over the last two years. In other bummer news from 2022: World War III started.

Moving on from that bleakness, in the words of Monty Python, let us “Look on the Bright Side of Life.” The Weaver and I did manage to get out of the house this year, to California in March, Seattle in April, and we made a return visit to Mineral Point, Wisconsin. All of this travel led up to my eighth trip to Iceland, a trip that was extremely intense (except for the time spent lolling in the hot pots at the swimming pool.) Was it worth a case of Covid? Is my Iceland infatuation finally over? I’ll be exploring that question in depth in the coming months (big announcement Sunday).

Flippist World Headquarters, December 2012:

Looking back as I enter the 19th year of Flippism is the Key (a quarter of my life!), I find that it has been a long, strange trip, indeed. Almost all the bloggers that I interacted with in those early years are dormant, notable exceptions are Carrie Marshall, and Alda Sigmundsdóttir, both of whom have published memoirs this year. All of the rest of the bloggers I followed in the aughts have ceased posting and only a few from ten years ago still write (Bob, Sheila, and the aforementioned Carrie. Even my long held connection to all things Icelandic, The Reykjavík Grapevine, has dropped its daily coverage. A new social media site, Post, holds some promise. I’ll be posting more music videos in the upcoming year, you can see all of them at the link in the sidebar. I’ve also been exploring the site ooh! which is dedicated to the discovery of old-school blogging—evidently there is still some life left in this archaic form of internet communication. Or is the internet is already over? Don’t get me started on GPT-3, it is humbling to think that a set of AI algorithms could replace my labored scribblings here.

Or my illustrations:

AI generated image of Minneapolis ala Vincent Van Gogh.

So here’s to 2023 and, at the risk of being made a fool, could it be any worse that 2022?

Would it make things better if I posted more cat pictures?

Loss of a Pet

Tommy, 1968

And here, my brothers and sisters, is the sad and weepy part...

A recent blog post about the death of an Icelandic cockatiel triggered in me an unexpected flood of emotions and memories about every critter with whom I've ever had the pleasure to share a roof.

Polly the cockatiel was just a bird, but I knew of her, and about her personality. Because I (and many others) had read about her she had unwittingly enriched not only her owner's life, but the lives of hundreds of others. I've had a dog, more than a few cats, and even a couple of lizards (although the reptiles weren't exactly chummy) while growing up and when our kids were young. One cat, in particular, was the closest. An ordinary tom, who moved in with us when I was about 8, who lived with me throughout my childhood and teen years, and even survived into my young adulthood. We did things together; we explored the backyard and the neighborhood (he would actually walk with me) and if I was troubled (or high) he could always tell. Still, he was just an ordinary cat, a cat whose favorite pastime was sleeping. In his old age, when he was suffering, I was the person who took him to the vet to be put down.

In this world filled with human death why is it that the loss of a pet can be so devastating? The answer was eloquently stated in the post I referred to:

... with animals, there is a complete absence of guile. They’re just whole and complete in who they are and they give of themselves unconditionally. And that is rare with people.

~Alda Sigmundsdóttir

So here's to Polly, Tommy, Skipper, Betty, Booger, Terry, Bodkay and all the other critters who have touched our lives. Love can be hard, it can be messy, it can be sad.

But it also can be perfect.




First posted 3/25/10
Re-posted, with edits, for Little Z

Loss of a Pet

Tommy, 1968

And here, my brothers and sisters, is the sad and weepy part...

A recent blog post about the death of a cockatiel triggered in me an unexpected flood of emotions and memories about every critter with whom I've ever had the pleasure to share a roof.

Polly the cockatiel was just a bird, but I knew of her, and about her personality. Because I (and many others) had read about her she had unwittingly enriched not only her owner's life, but the lives of hundreds of others. I've had a dog, more than a few cats, and even a couple of lizards (although the reptiles weren't exactly chummy) while growing up and when our kids were young. One cat, in particular, was the closest. An ordinary tom, who moved in with us when I was about 8, who lived with me throughout my childhood and teen years, and even survived into my young adulthood. We did things together; we explored the backyard and the neighborhood (he would actually go for a walk with me!) and if I was troubled (or high) he could always tell. Still, he was just an ordinary cat, a cat whose favorite pastime was sleeping. In his old age, when he was suffering, I was the person who took him to the vet to be put down.

In this world filled with human death why is it that the loss of a pet can be so devastating? The answer was eloquently stated in the post I referred to:

... with animals, there is a complete absence of guile. They’re just whole and complete in who they are and they give of themselves unconditionally. And that is rare with people.

~Alda Sigmundsdóttir

So here's to Polly, Tommy, Skipper, Betty, Booger, Terry, and Bodkay and all the other critters who have touched our lives. Love can be hard, it can be messy, it can be sad.

But it also can be perfect.

Mondays in Iceland - #60

I recently mentioned that I had been in communication with New York Times writer Dan Kois about swimming pool culture in Iceland. His story has been published, and it is great. So many of the stories I read about Iceland are full of baloney but he actually did research and it shows (I steered him toward Alda Sigmundsdóttir, who knows these things.)

Another Iceland story comes to me from Karen Heathwood, mastermind of the Sharon Spotbottom character that brightened this blog for several years. Karen hails from "down-under" and she sent me a link to a great two-part story on Australian radio about The Sagas and one man's personal saga. Part one is here. Part two is here. I'm usually allergic to podcasts, but this one is exceptional.  And if that wasn't enough, Karen sent me this Berserker-Sharon:

Icelandic Book Reviews

Links to FITK reviews of books by Icelandic authors:

Alda Sigmundsdóttir

Arnaldur Indriðasson

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Bergsveinn Birgisson

Bragí Ólofsson

Guðrún Mínervudóttir

Hallgrímur Helgasson

Halldór Laxness

Hildur Knútsdóttir

Jón Gnarr

Jón Kalman Stefánsson

Kristín Eiríksdóttir

Kristín Omarsdóttir

Maria Alva Roff

Oddný Eir

Olaf Olafsson

Ragnar Jónasson

Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir

Sjón

Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

Þórbergur Þórðarson