What do you think?
Rate this book
Þóra Guðmundsdóttir #4
The Day is Dark
When all contact is lost with two Icelanders working in a harsh and sparsely populated area on the northeast coast of Greenland, Thóra is hired to investigate. Is there any connection with the disappearance of a woman from the site some months earlier? And why are the locals so hostile?
421 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
185 people are currently reading
2468 people want to read
About the author
Yrsa Sigurdardottir
45 books2,886 followersAKA: Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is an Icelandic writer, of both crime-novels and children's fiction. She has been writing since 1998.
Her début crime-novel "Last Rituals" published in the US in 2007, and the UK in January 2008 was translated into English by Bernard Scudder, and is book 1 of the Thóra Gudmundsdóttir series.
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir graduated from high-school in 1983, finished a B.Sc. in civil engineering from the University of Iceland in 1988 and M.Sc in the same field from Concordia University in Montreal in 1997.
Yrsa now works as a civil engineer for the company Fjarhitun, as well as being a writer.
In 2000 the Icelandic department of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) awarded Yrsa for her book Við viljum jólin í júlí (We Want Christmas in July).
Yrsa lives in the Reykjavík suburb of Seltjarnarnes. She is married with two children.
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is an Icelandic writer, of both crime-novels and children's fiction. She has been writing since 1998.
Her début crime-novel "Last Rituals" published in the US in 2007, and the UK in January 2008 was translated into English by Bernard Scudder, and is book 1 of the Thóra Gudmundsdóttir series.
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir graduated from high-school in 1983, finished a B.Sc. in civil engineering from the University of Iceland in 1988 and M.Sc in the same field from Concordia University in Montreal in 1997.
Yrsa now works as a civil engineer for the company Fjarhitun, as well as being a writer.
In 2000 the Icelandic department of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) awarded Yrsa for her book Við viljum jólin í júlí (We Want Christmas in July).
Yrsa lives in the Reykjavík suburb of Seltjarnarnes. She is married with two children.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 387 reviews
March 29, 2012
I really like Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. No sooner do I finish one book (Last Rituals), then I start another (The Day is Dark). And now having finished that one, I crave a new one.
So why only three stars? The Day is Dark is creepy with fascinating Greenlandic information. I loved the locale, I like Thora, and the book completely engaged me. Still, I can't quite get beyond liked a lot to love.
In this installment of the series, Thora and her boyfriend are investigating a series of mysterious disappearances at a mine in Greenland. The bank financing the mine has hired them to clear up any suspicion that something - or someone - malicious is involved so that work on the mine can continue as planned.
Thora and Gunther arrive and are stranded in the freezing base of operations. A woman and two men have disappeared-all involved in some way or another with the taunting/defense of alcoholic (and gay) work Arnur who has been driven by the men back to drinking and rehab. The woman, a scientist who defended Arnur from the harassment has also disappeared. The workers remaining (most have left following the disappearances) are tense and bickering, the residents of the nearby village refuse to talk to the people from the mine, insisting that the area is haunted, food and drink are limited, and Thora misses her children (as well as running water).
I began feeling somewhat desperately claustrophobic myself. I guessed the solution long before then end and found the book often too slow-paced for a thriller.
So that's why I gave it three stars. On the other hand, I seem to be addicted. Despite my vow not to buy any more books this month (plus a long list of books I'm currently reading and books I plan on reading that I already own), I'm already fighting the urge to buy another Thora.
So there must be more to the writing than I understand...
So why only three stars? The Day is Dark is creepy with fascinating Greenlandic information. I loved the locale, I like Thora, and the book completely engaged me. Still, I can't quite get beyond liked a lot to love.
In this installment of the series, Thora and her boyfriend are investigating a series of mysterious disappearances at a mine in Greenland. The bank financing the mine has hired them to clear up any suspicion that something - or someone - malicious is involved so that work on the mine can continue as planned.
Thora and Gunther arrive and are stranded in the freezing base of operations. A woman and two men have disappeared-all involved in some way or another with the taunting/defense of alcoholic (and gay) work Arnur who has been driven by the men back to drinking and rehab. The woman, a scientist who defended Arnur from the harassment has also disappeared. The workers remaining (most have left following the disappearances) are tense and bickering, the residents of the nearby village refuse to talk to the people from the mine, insisting that the area is haunted, food and drink are limited, and Thora misses her children (as well as running water).
I began feeling somewhat desperately claustrophobic myself. I guessed the solution long before then end and found the book often too slow-paced for a thriller.
So that's why I gave it three stars. On the other hand, I seem to be addicted. Despite my vow not to buy any more books this month (plus a long list of books I'm currently reading and books I plan on reading that I already own), I'm already fighting the urge to buy another Thora.
So there must be more to the writing than I understand...
June 2, 2025
This lady has indeed some skills, as you can see from the way she finishes almost every chapter. But, if you ask me, there are at least three facts I've disliked:
- the novel is far too long, some 100 pages (or even more...) being a heavy surplus.
- there is a strong touch of morbidity an almost no normality in the whole story
- the novel is sad enough (even if well written) in order to AVOID unnecessary unpleasant characters, as Bella, Thora's boy or the drunken guide.
So, it was a big fight for the third star, at least half of it being mine...
- the novel is far too long, some 100 pages (or even more...) being a heavy surplus.
- there is a strong touch of morbidity an almost no normality in the whole story
- the novel is sad enough (even if well written) in order to AVOID unnecessary unpleasant characters, as Bella, Thora's boy or the drunken guide.
So, it was a big fight for the third star, at least half of it being mine...
July 9, 2023
I finished this despite my early misgivings, it is poorly written, far too much telling and not much showing and then the awful condescending tone towards everything Greenlandish which I can hardly bear. And the characters keep bickering at each other and seem to be competing about everything, so immature in my eyes, it is like they are all in their early teens instead of being grownups.
August 7, 2014
Opening chapter: Excellent. Really grabbed my attention, sent shivers down my spine, made me desperate to find out what would happen next.
Exposition: Not good. In fact, kind of excruciating in places. There were SO MANY infodumps in the dialogue, particularly when Matthew was talking to Thóra about the case. Also, I am aware this book is part of a series, but I didn't see the point of all the references to Thóra's family etc. They're not actually part of this story so it seemed pointless to run over a load of information that was presumably explored in more detail in previous books. In addition to this, I started to become annoyed and distracted by what seemed like errors in the translation - words out of place and incongruous slang.
Middle bit: Started getting interesting again, particularly when Thóra et al visited the village - there was a lot of tension, a heightened sense of excitement and I could really picture exactly what the place looked and felt like. I wish more of the book had been like this.
Final third: I just lost all interest, I'm afraid. It's never good when you a) forget what the mystery in a mystery novel actually is and b) forget why you're supposed to care.
What made me choose to read a book that is the fourth in a series I've never encountered before? It was the premise itself, rather than the way it was framed, that appealed to me. The Day is Dark involves the heroine Thóra, a lawyer, journeying to a remote mining site in Greenland where a number of Icelandic employees seem to have disappeared. I am really intrigued by desolate landscapes, by very remote places, by small communities or individuals who exist in almost complete isolation, so the idea of this place was instantly fascinating to me and the gripping first chapter just compounded my excitement. Unfortunately, nothing that came afterwards lived up to it. I was constantly irritated by stiff, artificial dialogue, I didn't really like the characters (I found Thóra quite dull and disagreeably unsympathetic towards the others), and ultimately I just wasn't bothered about how the story might end.
Another significant problem I had with the book was the depiction of the character Friðrikka.
I definitely wouldn't read another book in this series, but I haven't been entirely put off the author's work. I've heard a ghost story of hers is being published in English soon, and I wouldn't rule out reading that, although again it would be more for the themes than the style.
Exposition: Not good. In fact, kind of excruciating in places. There were SO MANY infodumps in the dialogue, particularly when Matthew was talking to Thóra about the case. Also, I am aware this book is part of a series, but I didn't see the point of all the references to Thóra's family etc. They're not actually part of this story so it seemed pointless to run over a load of information that was presumably explored in more detail in previous books. In addition to this, I started to become annoyed and distracted by what seemed like errors in the translation - words out of place and incongruous slang.
Middle bit: Started getting interesting again, particularly when Thóra et al visited the village - there was a lot of tension, a heightened sense of excitement and I could really picture exactly what the place looked and felt like. I wish more of the book had been like this.
Final third: I just lost all interest, I'm afraid. It's never good when you a) forget what the mystery in a mystery novel actually is and b) forget why you're supposed to care.
What made me choose to read a book that is the fourth in a series I've never encountered before? It was the premise itself, rather than the way it was framed, that appealed to me. The Day is Dark involves the heroine Thóra, a lawyer, journeying to a remote mining site in Greenland where a number of Icelandic employees seem to have disappeared. I am really intrigued by desolate landscapes, by very remote places, by small communities or individuals who exist in almost complete isolation, so the idea of this place was instantly fascinating to me and the gripping first chapter just compounded my excitement. Unfortunately, nothing that came afterwards lived up to it. I was constantly irritated by stiff, artificial dialogue, I didn't really like the characters (I found Thóra quite dull and disagreeably unsympathetic towards the others), and ultimately I just wasn't bothered about how the story might end.
Another significant problem I had with the book was the depiction of the character Friðrikka.
I definitely wouldn't read another book in this series, but I haven't been entirely put off the author's work. I've heard a ghost story of hers is being published in English soon, and I wouldn't rule out reading that, although again it would be more for the themes than the style.
January 2, 2023
I thought “The Day is Dark” was very well done. I honestly didn’t know who did what to whom and I loved the different things that were going on and finding out what happened to each character. And I did love that science in the end is explaining what is happening to some of the people in the village, but the villagers took it as a different thing which played into their own mythos.
Thora is feeling bored and gets the opportunity to work with Matthew on an insurance case involving his bank. A mining company has fallen behind schedule in a location in Greenland. The workers refuse to come back after one woman went missing and two other men as well. Thora is supposed to determine if the mining company is at fault and if the bank can get out of paying. Once again Bella is forced to go along (seriously I wonder why) and Thora and Matthew also go with a former worker at the company, a doctor, a searcher, and an IT specialist.
Thora seems to fumble a lot in this book. She just kind of wades in and thinks she knows things and sometimes she messes things up by how she asks questions.
I thought the writing at times got a bit “bumpy” and the flow did as well. I flew through the last book, but this one I really had to focus on while reading. And that was because I was trying to link all of the characters/missing together and didn’t realize how in essence there were a lot of “stories” going on and only some of them were linked.
The setting of Greenland sounds desolate, cold and just scary after a while. Scratch that place off my travel list.
I thought the ending hit on a little bit of supernatural which I think Sigurdardottir does quite well.
I read this for Cannonball Read 14 book bingo:
Cold: A book with a cold landscape, set during cold weather, or involving the common cold (or other virus); a book that has received a cold shoulder from reviewers; a book involving cold characters; a book that groups have attempted to ban.
The main part of this book takes place in Greenland during the winter months. Also there’s a whole virus that plays on what is happening to some of the people in this one. Heck, I will even say some characters were pretty cold to others in this one.
Thora is feeling bored and gets the opportunity to work with Matthew on an insurance case involving his bank. A mining company has fallen behind schedule in a location in Greenland. The workers refuse to come back after one woman went missing and two other men as well. Thora is supposed to determine if the mining company is at fault and if the bank can get out of paying. Once again Bella is forced to go along (seriously I wonder why) and Thora and Matthew also go with a former worker at the company, a doctor, a searcher, and an IT specialist.
Thora seems to fumble a lot in this book. She just kind of wades in and thinks she knows things and sometimes she messes things up by how she asks questions.
I thought the writing at times got a bit “bumpy” and the flow did as well. I flew through the last book, but this one I really had to focus on while reading. And that was because I was trying to link all of the characters/missing together and didn’t realize how in essence there were a lot of “stories” going on and only some of them were linked.
The setting of Greenland sounds desolate, cold and just scary after a while. Scratch that place off my travel list.
I thought the ending hit on a little bit of supernatural which I think Sigurdardottir does quite well.
I read this for Cannonball Read 14 book bingo:
Cold: A book with a cold landscape, set during cold weather, or involving the common cold (or other virus); a book that has received a cold shoulder from reviewers; a book involving cold characters; a book that groups have attempted to ban.
The main part of this book takes place in Greenland during the winter months. Also there’s a whole virus that plays on what is happening to some of the people in this one. Heck, I will even say some characters were pretty cold to others in this one.
April 21, 2023
To ''The Day is Dark'' είναι το τρίτο βιβλίο της, Ισλανδικής καταγωγής, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir που διαβάζω και το μόνο βέβαιο είναι ότι θα συνεχίσω την ανάγνωση των σκοτεινών, στα όρια του horror, μυθιστορημάτων της. Όπως και στο ''Why did you Lie?'', η συγγραφέας στήνει μια ιστορία έτσι ώστε ο αναγνώστης να πιστέψει ότι το υπερφυσικό στοιχείο έχει εκδηλώσει την παρουσία του και θα κατέχει τον πρωταγωνιστικό ρόλο. Τα βιβλία της Sigurðardóttir διακρίνονται από μια αλλόκοτη ατμόσφαιρα, μια απειλή είναι μόνιμα παρούσα κατά την διάρκεια εκτύλιξης της πλοκής και πραγματικά κατορθώνουν να μεταδώσουν με τον γλαφυρότερο τρόπο τα συναισθήματα του τρόμου και του πανικού που καταλαμβάνουν τους ήρωες μπροστά σε ανεξήγητα και άκρως φρικιαστικά γεγονότα. Συχνά, αν και όχι πάντοτε, το τέλος των βιβλίων που εξηγεί τα άκρως δυσερμήνευτα περιστατικά, αποκαλύπτει την ανθρώπινη παρέμβαση και τότε καταλαβαίνεις ότι έχεις αφήσει τον εαυτό σου να παραπλανηθεί από την μαγεία της γραφής και της φαντασίας της συγγραφέως.
Αυτο συμβαίνει και στο ''Τhe Day is Dark'' και σε αυτό συντελεί η επιλογή της μακρινής και απομονωμένης Γροιλανδίας ως τόπου στον οποίο διαδραματίζεται η ιστορία. Οι ακραίες καιρικές συνθήκες, η έλλειψη φωτός και το διαρκές σκότος, οι τοπικές προλήψεις και δεισιδαιμονίες των ντόπιων καθώς και η προσαρμογή σε ένα περιβάλλον όπου το μέγιστο ζητούμενο δεν είναι τίποτα περισσότερο από την επιβίωση, παρέχουν το καταλληλότερο θεμέλιο για ένα ψυχολογικό θρίλερ. Κατά την προσωπική μου άποψη δεν είναι το καλύτερο βιβλίο της Sigurðardóttir, παρόλα αυτά διατηρεί όλα τα στοιχεία που την ξεχωρίζουν από την μάζα των συγγραφέων του συγκεκριμένου είδους και αξίζει να το διαβάσετε κατά προτίμηση τη νύχτα και με ελάχιστο φωτισμό. Είναι σίγουρο ότι θα σας κάνει να ανατριχιάσετε πάμπολλες φορές.
Καλή ανάγνωση!
Αυτο συμβαίνει και στο ''Τhe Day is Dark'' και σε αυτό συντελεί η επιλογή της μακρινής και απομονωμένης Γροιλανδίας ως τόπου στον οποίο διαδραματίζεται η ιστορία. Οι ακραίες καιρικές συνθήκες, η έλλειψη φωτός και το διαρκές σκότος, οι τοπικές προλήψεις και δεισιδαιμονίες των ντόπιων καθώς και η προσαρμογή σε ένα περιβάλλον όπου το μέγιστο ζητούμενο δεν είναι τίποτα περισσότερο από την επιβίωση, παρέχουν το καταλληλότερο θεμέλιο για ένα ψυχολογικό θρίλερ. Κατά την προσωπική μου άποψη δεν είναι το καλύτερο βιβλίο της Sigurðardóttir, παρόλα αυτά διατηρεί όλα τα στοιχεία που την ξεχωρίζουν από την μάζα των συγγραφέων του συγκεκριμένου είδους και αξίζει να το διαβάσετε κατά προτίμηση τη νύχτα και με ελάχιστο φωτισμό. Είναι σίγουρο ότι θα σας κάνει να ανατριχιάσετε πάμπολλες φορές.
Καλή ανάγνωση!
March 19, 2015
Having enjoyed two other Thora Gudmundsdottir novels by Yrsa Siguroardottir, it is now official- I am a fan. Reading this one out of order, I'm still going back to #2 and #3 next. And this series I will read all she writes.
It's not a mystery type that will appeal to everyone. But does it to me.
Thora is a lawyer. This case is one that may increase association for her own small firm, despite having to go to Greenland for 5 days, she takes it. Matthew is going with her as aspects of the banking end are also on his plate. It's a needed respite from the home situation and yet she misses her daughter (8) and grandson (just 2)almost immediately.
Where to start? It's about a tiny town where drilling for a proposed station for a business will be built. But there's trouble. Missing workers, balking workers, completely mute native population refusing to answer to Icelandic, Danish, Greenlandic languages. Poor Matthew is forced to watch some German porn just to hear his own language. LOL!
It's basically an excellent but slightly overlong "closed room" mystery. And this time I did NOT guess the perp until just before the reveal. Only 8 business/lawyer/banking/tech/doctor people are stuck (and for more than the 5 days they had planned) when all satellite, telephone, water etc. facilities are inoperable from both weather and sabotage. It's bleak. When we get to a bigger town eventually for Thora to take a shower, it is an EVENT. Water from snow and lots of processed or cans foods and heat from a oil system is about all they have when they are at "the stations".
The native story is awesome in depth, yet the redundancies re the bullying and sarcasm of the original crew uncovered in the video files gets convoluted and overlong. But the cold itself, and Thora's wit never gets stale.
I just love this character. She's a 39 year old divorced grandma at this point with so much on her plate that her resolve, humor, methods, self-identity and much of her thought patterns are purely 6 star funny, savvy, street smart, and VALUABLE. Matthew is intelligent and honest in his style, but at some points quite OCD. The combination to adversity between the two is an excellent mix. Bella (secretary who rarely does her job in any form of the correct manner but must be hired to keep the firm's financial partner happy)also adds another level of snark or honesty to the chemical mix of this trio too. Bella is dragged along this time because Thora's fellow and only other lawyer in the firm needs her gone in order to actually finish his own current pile of work.
Thora does conflict resolution quite well in this one. It's not easy read copy, this book, but dark and Nordic and often wordy in description. And the nomenclature, for me, more impossible than the Russian. But I love this series. All the stories are long and involve much cultural lore, native or isolated population perception or manners, and tons of intergenerational and partner negotiations.
And I apologize for all the accent marks and combinations of alphabetic letters that I cannot reproduce on this typing feature. Thora speaks English, Danish (poorly), Icelandic, and German- and can get by in Italian too in increments.
But I cannot type in Icelandic at all.
Fabulous series. Reminds me of a Louise Penny kind of depth to the characterizations in a small town. But much colder in temperature and much darker in cultural mood.
It's not a mystery type that will appeal to everyone. But does it to me.
Thora is a lawyer. This case is one that may increase association for her own small firm, despite having to go to Greenland for 5 days, she takes it. Matthew is going with her as aspects of the banking end are also on his plate. It's a needed respite from the home situation and yet she misses her daughter (8) and grandson (just 2)almost immediately.
Where to start? It's about a tiny town where drilling for a proposed station for a business will be built. But there's trouble. Missing workers, balking workers, completely mute native population refusing to answer to Icelandic, Danish, Greenlandic languages. Poor Matthew is forced to watch some German porn just to hear his own language. LOL!
It's basically an excellent but slightly overlong "closed room" mystery. And this time I did NOT guess the perp until just before the reveal. Only 8 business/lawyer/banking/tech/doctor people are stuck (and for more than the 5 days they had planned) when all satellite, telephone, water etc. facilities are inoperable from both weather and sabotage. It's bleak. When we get to a bigger town eventually for Thora to take a shower, it is an EVENT. Water from snow and lots of processed or cans foods and heat from a oil system is about all they have when they are at "the stations".
The native story is awesome in depth, yet the redundancies re the bullying and sarcasm of the original crew uncovered in the video files gets convoluted and overlong. But the cold itself, and Thora's wit never gets stale.
I just love this character. She's a 39 year old divorced grandma at this point with so much on her plate that her resolve, humor, methods, self-identity and much of her thought patterns are purely 6 star funny, savvy, street smart, and VALUABLE. Matthew is intelligent and honest in his style, but at some points quite OCD. The combination to adversity between the two is an excellent mix. Bella (secretary who rarely does her job in any form of the correct manner but must be hired to keep the firm's financial partner happy)also adds another level of snark or honesty to the chemical mix of this trio too. Bella is dragged along this time because Thora's fellow and only other lawyer in the firm needs her gone in order to actually finish his own current pile of work.
Thora does conflict resolution quite well in this one. It's not easy read copy, this book, but dark and Nordic and often wordy in description. And the nomenclature, for me, more impossible than the Russian. But I love this series. All the stories are long and involve much cultural lore, native or isolated population perception or manners, and tons of intergenerational and partner negotiations.
And I apologize for all the accent marks and combinations of alphabetic letters that I cannot reproduce on this typing feature. Thora speaks English, Danish (poorly), Icelandic, and German- and can get by in Italian too in increments.
But I cannot type in Icelandic at all.
Fabulous series. Reminds me of a Louise Penny kind of depth to the characterizations in a small town. But much colder in temperature and much darker in cultural mood.
March 18, 2021
I didn't enjoy this much as previous books in the series. The pacing felt a bit off - slow, slow, slow then a sudden mad rush. Bella is becoming a firm favourite of mine as the series goes on though, I have to say.
Conclusion - still an entertaining read, but not Sigurdardottir at her best, in my opinion.
Conclusion - still an entertaining read, but not Sigurdardottir at her best, in my opinion.
February 23, 2022
Yrsa hat mich nicht enttäuscht, wie die letzten Teile war auch dieser Teil spannend und zeitweise auch wirklich gruselig. Ich finde auch wirklich interessant wieviel man von den Bräuchen, Sitten und Leben in Grönland erfährt.
July 28, 2019
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir's series character, Icelandic lawyer Þóra Guðmundsdóttir, is roped in by her banker boyfriend Matthew to go with him and a group of others to a remote mining site in Greenland to investigate, for insurance purposes, a series of odd and possibly murderous events there. The visitors soon find that hostile weather and sabotaged communications equipment make them virtual prisoners, and matters aren't helped by the fact that almost all of the Greenlanders who live in the nearby settlement refuse even to acknowledge their existence. The site, according to the locals, has been erected on an area of cursed land where once there was a village whose inhabitants all died in mysterious circumstances in the early twentieth century.
There are mysteries of the present, too. Why are there old human bones in so many of the site offices' desk drawers? What's happened to the two drillers left behind as a skeleton (no pun intended) crew to keep the site ticking over while the rest of the staff were away? Does an enigmatic video clip really show one of them being hacked to death?
The novel's setup reminded me of similar situations in science fiction, where our plucky but quarrelsome band of spacefaring heroes must investigate why the entire population of a colony on a planet that's been certified as safe has disappeared, or why there's no one but a few corpses aboard a drifting spaceship. Sigurðardóttir does manage to create in the early stages of the novel that same atmosphere of claustrophobia, of a menace that seems all the more fearsome because its nature is completely unknown -- alien, even. Are the villagers right that the souls of the dead, of those people who died over a century ago, are maliciously stalking the living who dare to occupy their territory? To Þóra and her companions, despite their twenty-first-century sensibilities and rationalist educations, there are times when that explanation seems all too probable . . .
After the highly promising setup, however, everything seemed to me to go downhill. To call the text prosaic would be to commit an error of charity: it plods and lumbers along with all the earnestness of a conscientious teenager's Eng Lit essay. The words are individually perfectly correct, they're in more or less the right order, and the sentences mean what they're supposed to mean (although see below), but the result is lifeless, sparkless and turgid. When I came to "He emitted a dry and mirthless laugh" on page 249 I can assure you, dear reader, that I . . . well, emitted a dry and mirthless laugh. It wasn't that this example was in itself especially egregious; it was just that it seemed to cap a whole hell of a lot of similarly dreary stuff.
I obviously can't tell if it's the translation or the original text that's at fault here; that said, it's certainly not the translator's fault that The Day is Dark is at least fifty percent longer than it should be.
Philip Roughton's translation seems technically accurate, despite any flourish it might lack, except in one instance that I noted of confusion on either his part or the copyeditor's:
Obviously what Sigurðardóttir intended to say, and presumably did in the Icelandic original, was that the toxins become more prevalent the closer you get to the top of the food chain, not the shallower the creature's habitat.
This is the second of Yrsa Sigurðardóttir's Þóra Guðmundsdóttir novels that I've read and, glancing back to my notes on my first experience of the series, Ashes to Dust, I see that back in January 2018 I came to very much the same conclusions I've come to here. Both novels seem to me grossly overblown and clumsily written and/or translated. I think that in future I'll stick to the screen adaptations of her work, such as the excellent Ég Man Thig (2017; vt I Remember You).
There are mysteries of the present, too. Why are there old human bones in so many of the site offices' desk drawers? What's happened to the two drillers left behind as a skeleton (no pun intended) crew to keep the site ticking over while the rest of the staff were away? Does an enigmatic video clip really show one of them being hacked to death?
The novel's setup reminded me of similar situations in science fiction, where our plucky but quarrelsome band of spacefaring heroes must investigate why the entire population of a colony on a planet that's been certified as safe has disappeared, or why there's no one but a few corpses aboard a drifting spaceship. Sigurðardóttir does manage to create in the early stages of the novel that same atmosphere of claustrophobia, of a menace that seems all the more fearsome because its nature is completely unknown -- alien, even. Are the villagers right that the souls of the dead, of those people who died over a century ago, are maliciously stalking the living who dare to occupy their territory? To Þóra and her companions, despite their twenty-first-century sensibilities and rationalist educations, there are times when that explanation seems all too probable . . .
After the highly promising setup, however, everything seemed to me to go downhill. To call the text prosaic would be to commit an error of charity: it plods and lumbers along with all the earnestness of a conscientious teenager's Eng Lit essay. The words are individually perfectly correct, they're in more or less the right order, and the sentences mean what they're supposed to mean (although see below), but the result is lifeless, sparkless and turgid. When I came to "He emitted a dry and mirthless laugh" on page 249 I can assure you, dear reader, that I . . . well, emitted a dry and mirthless laugh. It wasn't that this example was in itself especially egregious; it was just that it seemed to cap a whole hell of a lot of similarly dreary stuff.
I obviously can't tell if it's the translation or the original text that's at fault here; that said, it's certainly not the translator's fault that The Day is Dark is at least fifty percent longer than it should be.
Philip Roughton's translation seems technically accurate, despite any flourish it might lack, except in one instance that I noted of confusion on either his part or the copyeditor's:
These toxins are persistent organic pollutants that do not degrade in nature, so they accumulate in the food chain and more often than not wind up in the sea. They are found in more plentiful quantities the higher they go in the sea's food chain, so they occur in the greatest quantity at its surface. [pp229-30]
Obviously what Sigurðardóttir intended to say, and presumably did in the Icelandic original, was that the toxins become more prevalent the closer you get to the top of the food chain, not the shallower the creature's habitat.
This is the second of Yrsa Sigurðardóttir's Þóra Guðmundsdóttir novels that I've read and, glancing back to my notes on my first experience of the series, Ashes to Dust, I see that back in January 2018 I came to very much the same conclusions I've come to here. Both novels seem to me grossly overblown and clumsily written and/or translated. I think that in future I'll stick to the screen adaptations of her work, such as the excellent Ég Man Thig (2017; vt I Remember You).
February 24, 2025
Nisam zadovoljna, počelo je baš dobro, ali onda je usporilo, dva puta sam pridremala dok sam čitala, a to nije dobar znak. -.-
August 15, 2011
It took me a while to work out why I wasn't more gripped by this book. The story is clever, logical and well thought out - I never guessed the ending - the writing is decent, the setting is interesting - set in Greenland with some fascinating background info into the country - but what really lets all these books down is the bad characterisation. All the characters (whether 'goodies' or 'baddies') are one dimensional and you never know any of them well enough to care what happens to them. Having read all these books, I know no more about the main protagonist now than I did in the first book.
April 30, 2021
As if the setting of Iceland isn't remote enough -- at least for much of the world -- or cold enough or barren enough, author Yrsa Sigurdardottir goes one step further in The Day Is Dark, sending her protagonist, Thora, to Greenland. The book was so atmospheric I could almost see my breath as I read it.
February 29, 2024
I'm not a fan of this one, unfortunately 😕 nice atmosphere and icy setting but plot and characters dragged.
March 27, 2014
Thora Gudmundsdottir is a single mother, an unexpected grandmother, a struggling lawyer and a magnet for mysteries. Sitting in her office one afternoon wishing for something more riveting than pre-nuptial agreements to come across her desk Thora receives a call from her boyfriend Matthew, offering her a chance to do some investigative work for a bank fearing a huge investment loss at a Greenland research facility. Despite her craving for some excitement she is reluctant to travel so far away but takes the job anyway. Researchers have disappeared under very mysterious circumstances and a strange video of the last two at the facility sheds no light on what happened to them other than it was something grizzly.
Ms. Siguroardottir’s other Thora mysteries have all taken place in Iceland so I was a little apprehensive about the Greenland setting for this one. I needn’t have been. The author does a wonderful job of describing the setting, remote as it is and I learned a lot about the history and just how remote Greenland really is. The story itself, however, left a little to be desired. While her other books moved along at a fairly brisk pace and held my interest with Icelandic superstitions and folk tales as well as the plotline, the book moved a little to slowly. It still contained facts and local lore (Greenland-ic) but the plot itself dragged. I felt there were too many possibilities and too many players in The Day is Dark.
Here’s to hoping that the next installment in the series takes the reader back to Iceland, Thora’s family and the interesting mysteries I have come to expect.
Ms. Siguroardottir’s other Thora mysteries have all taken place in Iceland so I was a little apprehensive about the Greenland setting for this one. I needn’t have been. The author does a wonderful job of describing the setting, remote as it is and I learned a lot about the history and just how remote Greenland really is. The story itself, however, left a little to be desired. While her other books moved along at a fairly brisk pace and held my interest with Icelandic superstitions and folk tales as well as the plotline, the book moved a little to slowly. It still contained facts and local lore (Greenland-ic) but the plot itself dragged. I felt there were too many possibilities and too many players in The Day is Dark.
Here’s to hoping that the next installment in the series takes the reader back to Iceland, Thora’s family and the interesting mysteries I have come to expect.
September 8, 2012
Almost gave it 5 stars, maybe I should have done. This is the best of the series I have read so far. Thora is asked by Matthew, who has now moved to Iceland and has a new job with a bank, to come to Greenland to look at a possible breach of contract case which could involve a possible insurance payout. A mining company has been operating in a remote area in Greenland and three employees have gone missing, now presumed dead. A rather eerie and bizarre video clip had been found, where it looks as if someone is being dismembered, but no body has been locatede todate. A group set off to investigate, Thora, Matthew, Bella, which Thora is not too pleased about, three former employees and a doctor. The athmosphere is dark and chilling, remote, snowbound and with a nearby village of unfriendly residents. I was captivated from the first few pages and could not leave this book down. I just hope, Ms. Sigurdardottir has another book in the pipeline, as I really like her stories. I would highly recommend this series to crime, mystery lovers.
March 29, 2012
An enthralling mystery and engaging thriller that unsettles you as you read on with fear and expectation.
Set in an isolated settlement in Eastern Greenland the story captures the sense of danger from the environment - is this what killed the three missing workers?
A private investigation is undertaken by the bank that has underwritten the project when the drilling company seem unable to continue and meet their contractual obligations.
Major themes are covered. Our impact on the environment, loss of indigenous peoples' heritage and traditions, global warming and faith. Less grand but equally influencing communities subjects around workplace bullying, sexual harassment, alcoholism, domestic abuse and relationships are also covered.
The author is faithful to the place, its people and its past in an account that is well paced, with tension and suspense.
A beautifully crafted story that is a compelling read and a true whodunit.
Set in an isolated settlement in Eastern Greenland the story captures the sense of danger from the environment - is this what killed the three missing workers?
A private investigation is undertaken by the bank that has underwritten the project when the drilling company seem unable to continue and meet their contractual obligations.
Major themes are covered. Our impact on the environment, loss of indigenous peoples' heritage and traditions, global warming and faith. Less grand but equally influencing communities subjects around workplace bullying, sexual harassment, alcoholism, domestic abuse and relationships are also covered.
The author is faithful to the place, its people and its past in an account that is well paced, with tension and suspense.
A beautifully crafted story that is a compelling read and a true whodunit.
April 9, 2018
Like her previous books, this one is very atmospheric and combines elements of history and environment in the plot. One effectively ends up with a series of what, why and whodunnits spread over a century. The brooding isolation and cold of a Greenland winter adds to the darkness of the plot. I remain a big fan of the series.
July 22, 2017
review of
Yrsa Sigurdardóttir's The Day is Dark
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 21-22, 2017
This is the 1st Nordic crime fiction I've read. The author's Icelandic, the action takes place mostly in Greenland. Perhaps Lars von Trier's The Element of Crime (1984) might qualify as my 1st exposure to the genre but there's probably something earlier than that that I'm not thinking of. Wd Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960) qualify? I associate the popularity of the genre, if it is popular, w/ Stieg Larsson's trilogy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, all of wch were made into movies after the author's death in 2004 (according to Wikipedia). I've probably seen the movie made from The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Still, this is the 1st of the bks I've read. A back cover review says ""Worthy of Stieg Larsson." —Kirkus Reviews"
The author is described on the back cover as being "a director of one of Iceland's largest engineering firms. Her work is found on bestseller lists all over the world." For the sheep readers, the people who're afraid to read anything that hasn't been preapproved for them by some sort of semi-delusional mass consumption, this last sentence is perfect. For a person like myself, it's a complete turn-off b/c my experience of what constitutes 'best-selling' is that robopaths flock to it - & robopaths are only literate enuf to read their marching orders, to consume their cult propaganda. I bought a used copy of this so I didn't contribute to the dubious statistics.
One of the things that impressed me about this the most, if "impressed" is the right word, is that the protagonist, a lawyer accustomed to doing divorce cases, mainly gets done what she gets done by being a reasonable level-headed person that people will trust & talk to. I suspect that these are professional qualities that "a director of one of Iceland's largest engineering firms" might respect. I respect them too. I also don't think they're necessarily likely to characterize most lawyers. Lawyers are, after all, in the business of 'winning' thru argumentation - wch generally involves all sorts of underhanded manipulation. Wd you trust a lawyer? I have friends who're lawyers, obviously we like each other b/c of interests in common & mutual respect. Still, the qualities of the lawyer hero, Thóra, as presented in this bk are a bit too idealized for them to be believable to me. She's a bit too trustworthy. Take away a lawyer's cushy economically spoiled lifestyle & you might have a cornered rat. SO, the mystery:
"She swallowed her disappointment. "Are the workers in Greenland?"
""No, they're in Iceland. All but two people who are probably still on-site. The others cam home during their allotted leave, but now refuse to return."
""What do you mean when you say that the two who remained behind are probably still on-site?"
""Nothing's been heard from them for around ten days, and they can't get hold of anyone there to go and find out what's happening. It's possible that the camp's communication system has simply failed, but apparently the only way to find out is to go there. If a logical explanation is found for their silence, it's conceivable that the other employees can be persuaded to return. That of course would be the best solution for the bank."" - pp 14-15
Thora's hired by a bank to try to solve a potentially financially damaging snag in a nascent mining operation in a sparsely populated area of Greenland. Taking the job appeals to her b/c there's some mystery involved & she's sick of divorce cases. The story is generally not a very happy one but there is a little humor early on:
"She leaned in and whispered, "Did you notice that Bella is the only other person awake?" Stealthily, she turned to check if this was still the case. "If she weren't here I could invite you to the toilet and initiate you into the mile high club." She looked Matthew in the eye and grinned. "Damn it, what a shame she had to come." She turned back to the window, pleased with herself." - p 38
As I'm sure you all realize, the mile high club is for people who dump their poop out to freeze in the high altitude while their partner parachutes attached to a line & catches it in a net. They then get reeled back in & beat the pooper w/ the frozen club.
Ok, ok, I'm joshin' ya, the mile high club is just a name for people who have sex on airplanes. But you probably already knew that.
One of the main characters is a hunter who still lives according to the traditional lifestyle. He observes the Icelandic company employees discretely from a distance: "It was not his job to rescue full-grown children who came here on a fool's errand. He would concentrate on saving the dog; it was far more important to him." (p 60) The hunter has important wisdom but it's framed in a belief system that's not acceptable to the more modern people around him.
An Icelandic author writes a bk about Greenland. I wonder how many people conflate Iceland & Greenland? I don't but I do associate the 2 even though I know that Greenland's colder & definitely not greener, etc..
"Thóra skimmed over the text. It didn't surprise her that it was thought that those who fist settled in Eastern Greenland around two thousand years ago had all died out. One migration and settlement followed another, but it always ended the same way: No one managed to survive for long in this harsh region. It wasn't until the eighteenth century that settlements started to thrive on the east coast, but in the nineteenth century the population started to decrease. One village after another fell to ruin after the villagers died from hunger or other hardships" - p 64
Sigurdardóttir does an excellent job of establishing a plethora of possible explanations for the still unknown fate of the missing persons & for the fate of the previous dead of the area: "Inuits believed that something called a Tupilak had killed them all." (p 67) When I think of something like a Tupilak, an apparently threatening curse or monster-like figure, I think of plans of ways to warn future people away from toxic waste areas w/ danger-lives that far exceed the likelihood of surrounding civilization lifespans. In other words, warnings that rely on imagery rather than language since the language may be long dead while the threatening imagery may still live on.
""I have a feeling this is probably some kind of Tupilak," said Friòrikka, pointing at the figurine. At first Thóra had found the figurine resembled a banana upon which something had been scratched, but when she looked more closely she saw that it was an intricately carved bone to which had been tied some strange-looking odds and ends: hair, some kind of leather, and a bird's claw. The craftsman appeared to have tried to make the bone itself resemble an ogre, and indeed the figurine looked quite monstrous. It had a large face with open jaws and numerous sharp teeth. Little hands with claws were carved into its belly but otherwise the monster was covered with a pattern that they couldn't understand, but that possibly symbolized something. On the figurine's back a tail could be distinguished." - p 115
"The woman frowned. "We're not bad to outsiders. We don't like the place you choose to live in. No one should be there; you are disturbing the evil that dwells there and by doing so you're putting us all in danger. We just want you to go somewhere else."" - p 134
As it turns out, the Greenlanders are correct in their warning but can't explain it in a way that seems anything but superstitious to the Icelanders so the warning is written off as being merely fanciful instead of representing a real danger. All sorts of things turn out to be correct.. but for the wrong reasons:
""Didn't those bastard Greenlanders just sabotage the equipment?" asked Eyjólfur immediately. "They'd certainly be capable of it."
""What the hell are you talking about, boy?" snapped the doctor. "Why would they want to sabotage anything here? I'm certain I know more about the natives of this country than you do, and I can tell you for sure that they're the kindest of people and wish no one ill."
""Except for their women," interrupted Friòrikka. "They're not particularly kind to them." Again she seemed to regret having spoken, and pressed her lips shut.
"The doctor harrumphed, then said, "The way that a particular people or race handles alcohol says nothing about its disposition. Alcohol doesn't really bring out the best in Icelanders either. What if we were deprived of our sustenance, like these people have been because of bleeding-heart liberal Westerners banning the hunting they depend upon?"" - p 90
What if everyone's a little bit right & a little bit wrong? Then there's the whole process of sifting thru it all & not throwing out the baby w/ the bathwater. There's definitely some clear-headed wisdom in this bk, & I admire it for that, but it strikes me as the type of wisdom that a person can have, an author can have, when they have a comfortable distance from actual problems that they may never have to directly experience the miseries of - b/c, if they did, they'd be just as destroyed by it, if not more so, than the people immersed in it from birth usually are.
The hunter, Igimaq, tries to fulfill what he considers his duty by warning people away from the cursed area. Alas, the distance between the culture he represents & the culture he's trying to warn is too great, the problem is more than a language gap - wch, in itself, is usually more than enuf to cause problems. He decides to appeal to his old friend who has some power in the community as a tribal elder & who at least partially understands the problem: "No one would listen to him that way. Besides, it was only this former friend of his who knew the story and so would hopefully understand the gravity of the situation immediately. Unless he had lost his connection with his roots." (p 107)
""Don't you remember what we were taught, Sikki?" The hunter stared at his friend. "We are responsible for this area." He recalled as if it were yesterday how the two of them had been entrusted with this task; Igimaq because he was a direct descendant of the greatest hunters in the village on his father's side, and Sikki because he was in line to become the next angekokk, or shaman, as his father and grandfather had been before him." - p 155
Another mysterious artifact is found: "After most of the ice had been removed from it, it turned out to be a bone that had been polished, with holes drilled in two places in the middle. A leather strap had been tied to it at both ends, meaning that above all, it resembled a giant's armband." (p 108) One might be tempted to jump to a conclusion that it's another relic similar to the Tupilak. After all, it's a bone w/ pieces of leather tied to it. But one of the strongest lessons of this bk is don't jump to conclusions or you'll never figure out the truth.
As w/ most mysteries, suspicion is cast on various characters:
"No doubt the therapist would quickly lose his appetite if Arnar started to describe the events leading to his fall. Terrible, mindless vengeance and violence—and not from someone who kills for survival but from him, a supposedly civilized human being. And toward his colleagues, too . . . He felt sick when he recalled the reasons behind his actions. But though the others' behavior toward him had been disgraceful, he alone was responsible for what had happened. And for that, he couldn't blame alcohol." - p 112
"Naruana could only hope that Igimaq didn't know what his son had done, how low he had stooped. Hope that he hadn't seen him as he stood there, his hands stained with the blood of a prey no hunter would boast about." - p 128
"Arnar turned his back to the wall. "What do you think about killing animals?" he asked.
""Me?" asked the young woman, as if he could have meant someone else. "I don't find it pleasant to think about, but it's okay if the animals are meant to be eaten."
""And people?" asked Arnar, without changing his expression or his tone of voice. "Is that all right?"" - p 151
"Friòrikka sounded skeptical. "You know, I read somewhere that in the old days the Greenlanders never had any actual religion. In place of faith they lived with fear." Friòrikka's breathing was regular, as if she were drifting off and speaking almost in her sleep. "That's how I feel. I'm not religious but I feel a persistent fear of something, though I don't know what."" - p 183
If the following is accurate then Greenland is more interesting to me than ever:
"It was an ancient custom; those who lived together in small groups could not afford discord, meaning that those who raised their voices or bickered with each other were looked down on. The only way to express one's disapproval was to remain silent, because words spoken in anger had a way of snowballing, intensifying and provoking hostility that would eventually put the survival of the entire community at risk. The Greenlandic language was thus free of invective and Igimaq was not about to start swearing in Danish." - p 264
That's certainly a lesson that more people shd learn.
There're times when I suspect authors of saying just enuf to stimulate the reader to figure out at least one aspect of a mystery shortly before the answer is presented in full.
"Eyjólfur frowned. "I don't know. He wasn't so awful that people would have thought about killing him." He looked awkwardly at Friòrikka in the hope of support. "Right? It wasn't like that, was it?"
"Friòrikka looked from him to her lap. "No. Definitely not." She abruptly fell silent. It was as if all the air had gone out of her." - p 355
It was after the reading the above (& what led up to it) that I realized who killed _____ & why. I felt satisfied w/ myself when my theory was verified shortly thereafter. I'll bet there's even a term for when authors nudge the reader into solving a problem.
All in all, I admit to begrudgingly finding this bk wise & well thought thru. One of the things that makes my praise for it "begrudging" is that the writing style fairly screams of SOON-TO-BE-A-MAJOR-MOTION-PICTURE - but maybe it's not brutal or shocking enuf for that.
Yrsa Sigurdardóttir's The Day is Dark
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 21-22, 2017
This is the 1st Nordic crime fiction I've read. The author's Icelandic, the action takes place mostly in Greenland. Perhaps Lars von Trier's The Element of Crime (1984) might qualify as my 1st exposure to the genre but there's probably something earlier than that that I'm not thinking of. Wd Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960) qualify? I associate the popularity of the genre, if it is popular, w/ Stieg Larsson's trilogy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, all of wch were made into movies after the author's death in 2004 (according to Wikipedia). I've probably seen the movie made from The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Still, this is the 1st of the bks I've read. A back cover review says ""Worthy of Stieg Larsson." —Kirkus Reviews"
The author is described on the back cover as being "a director of one of Iceland's largest engineering firms. Her work is found on bestseller lists all over the world." For the sheep readers, the people who're afraid to read anything that hasn't been preapproved for them by some sort of semi-delusional mass consumption, this last sentence is perfect. For a person like myself, it's a complete turn-off b/c my experience of what constitutes 'best-selling' is that robopaths flock to it - & robopaths are only literate enuf to read their marching orders, to consume their cult propaganda. I bought a used copy of this so I didn't contribute to the dubious statistics.
One of the things that impressed me about this the most, if "impressed" is the right word, is that the protagonist, a lawyer accustomed to doing divorce cases, mainly gets done what she gets done by being a reasonable level-headed person that people will trust & talk to. I suspect that these are professional qualities that "a director of one of Iceland's largest engineering firms" might respect. I respect them too. I also don't think they're necessarily likely to characterize most lawyers. Lawyers are, after all, in the business of 'winning' thru argumentation - wch generally involves all sorts of underhanded manipulation. Wd you trust a lawyer? I have friends who're lawyers, obviously we like each other b/c of interests in common & mutual respect. Still, the qualities of the lawyer hero, Thóra, as presented in this bk are a bit too idealized for them to be believable to me. She's a bit too trustworthy. Take away a lawyer's cushy economically spoiled lifestyle & you might have a cornered rat. SO, the mystery:
"She swallowed her disappointment. "Are the workers in Greenland?"
""No, they're in Iceland. All but two people who are probably still on-site. The others cam home during their allotted leave, but now refuse to return."
""What do you mean when you say that the two who remained behind are probably still on-site?"
""Nothing's been heard from them for around ten days, and they can't get hold of anyone there to go and find out what's happening. It's possible that the camp's communication system has simply failed, but apparently the only way to find out is to go there. If a logical explanation is found for their silence, it's conceivable that the other employees can be persuaded to return. That of course would be the best solution for the bank."" - pp 14-15
Thora's hired by a bank to try to solve a potentially financially damaging snag in a nascent mining operation in a sparsely populated area of Greenland. Taking the job appeals to her b/c there's some mystery involved & she's sick of divorce cases. The story is generally not a very happy one but there is a little humor early on:
"She leaned in and whispered, "Did you notice that Bella is the only other person awake?" Stealthily, she turned to check if this was still the case. "If she weren't here I could invite you to the toilet and initiate you into the mile high club." She looked Matthew in the eye and grinned. "Damn it, what a shame she had to come." She turned back to the window, pleased with herself." - p 38
As I'm sure you all realize, the mile high club is for people who dump their poop out to freeze in the high altitude while their partner parachutes attached to a line & catches it in a net. They then get reeled back in & beat the pooper w/ the frozen club.
Ok, ok, I'm joshin' ya, the mile high club is just a name for people who have sex on airplanes. But you probably already knew that.
One of the main characters is a hunter who still lives according to the traditional lifestyle. He observes the Icelandic company employees discretely from a distance: "It was not his job to rescue full-grown children who came here on a fool's errand. He would concentrate on saving the dog; it was far more important to him." (p 60) The hunter has important wisdom but it's framed in a belief system that's not acceptable to the more modern people around him.
An Icelandic author writes a bk about Greenland. I wonder how many people conflate Iceland & Greenland? I don't but I do associate the 2 even though I know that Greenland's colder & definitely not greener, etc..
"Thóra skimmed over the text. It didn't surprise her that it was thought that those who fist settled in Eastern Greenland around two thousand years ago had all died out. One migration and settlement followed another, but it always ended the same way: No one managed to survive for long in this harsh region. It wasn't until the eighteenth century that settlements started to thrive on the east coast, but in the nineteenth century the population started to decrease. One village after another fell to ruin after the villagers died from hunger or other hardships" - p 64
Sigurdardóttir does an excellent job of establishing a plethora of possible explanations for the still unknown fate of the missing persons & for the fate of the previous dead of the area: "Inuits believed that something called a Tupilak had killed them all." (p 67) When I think of something like a Tupilak, an apparently threatening curse or monster-like figure, I think of plans of ways to warn future people away from toxic waste areas w/ danger-lives that far exceed the likelihood of surrounding civilization lifespans. In other words, warnings that rely on imagery rather than language since the language may be long dead while the threatening imagery may still live on.
""I have a feeling this is probably some kind of Tupilak," said Friòrikka, pointing at the figurine. At first Thóra had found the figurine resembled a banana upon which something had been scratched, but when she looked more closely she saw that it was an intricately carved bone to which had been tied some strange-looking odds and ends: hair, some kind of leather, and a bird's claw. The craftsman appeared to have tried to make the bone itself resemble an ogre, and indeed the figurine looked quite monstrous. It had a large face with open jaws and numerous sharp teeth. Little hands with claws were carved into its belly but otherwise the monster was covered with a pattern that they couldn't understand, but that possibly symbolized something. On the figurine's back a tail could be distinguished." - p 115
"The woman frowned. "We're not bad to outsiders. We don't like the place you choose to live in. No one should be there; you are disturbing the evil that dwells there and by doing so you're putting us all in danger. We just want you to go somewhere else."" - p 134
As it turns out, the Greenlanders are correct in their warning but can't explain it in a way that seems anything but superstitious to the Icelanders so the warning is written off as being merely fanciful instead of representing a real danger. All sorts of things turn out to be correct.. but for the wrong reasons:
""Didn't those bastard Greenlanders just sabotage the equipment?" asked Eyjólfur immediately. "They'd certainly be capable of it."
""What the hell are you talking about, boy?" snapped the doctor. "Why would they want to sabotage anything here? I'm certain I know more about the natives of this country than you do, and I can tell you for sure that they're the kindest of people and wish no one ill."
""Except for their women," interrupted Friòrikka. "They're not particularly kind to them." Again she seemed to regret having spoken, and pressed her lips shut.
"The doctor harrumphed, then said, "The way that a particular people or race handles alcohol says nothing about its disposition. Alcohol doesn't really bring out the best in Icelanders either. What if we were deprived of our sustenance, like these people have been because of bleeding-heart liberal Westerners banning the hunting they depend upon?"" - p 90
What if everyone's a little bit right & a little bit wrong? Then there's the whole process of sifting thru it all & not throwing out the baby w/ the bathwater. There's definitely some clear-headed wisdom in this bk, & I admire it for that, but it strikes me as the type of wisdom that a person can have, an author can have, when they have a comfortable distance from actual problems that they may never have to directly experience the miseries of - b/c, if they did, they'd be just as destroyed by it, if not more so, than the people immersed in it from birth usually are.
The hunter, Igimaq, tries to fulfill what he considers his duty by warning people away from the cursed area. Alas, the distance between the culture he represents & the culture he's trying to warn is too great, the problem is more than a language gap - wch, in itself, is usually more than enuf to cause problems. He decides to appeal to his old friend who has some power in the community as a tribal elder & who at least partially understands the problem: "No one would listen to him that way. Besides, it was only this former friend of his who knew the story and so would hopefully understand the gravity of the situation immediately. Unless he had lost his connection with his roots." (p 107)
""Don't you remember what we were taught, Sikki?" The hunter stared at his friend. "We are responsible for this area." He recalled as if it were yesterday how the two of them had been entrusted with this task; Igimaq because he was a direct descendant of the greatest hunters in the village on his father's side, and Sikki because he was in line to become the next angekokk, or shaman, as his father and grandfather had been before him." - p 155
Another mysterious artifact is found: "After most of the ice had been removed from it, it turned out to be a bone that had been polished, with holes drilled in two places in the middle. A leather strap had been tied to it at both ends, meaning that above all, it resembled a giant's armband." (p 108) One might be tempted to jump to a conclusion that it's another relic similar to the Tupilak. After all, it's a bone w/ pieces of leather tied to it. But one of the strongest lessons of this bk is don't jump to conclusions or you'll never figure out the truth.
As w/ most mysteries, suspicion is cast on various characters:
"No doubt the therapist would quickly lose his appetite if Arnar started to describe the events leading to his fall. Terrible, mindless vengeance and violence—and not from someone who kills for survival but from him, a supposedly civilized human being. And toward his colleagues, too . . . He felt sick when he recalled the reasons behind his actions. But though the others' behavior toward him had been disgraceful, he alone was responsible for what had happened. And for that, he couldn't blame alcohol." - p 112
"Naruana could only hope that Igimaq didn't know what his son had done, how low he had stooped. Hope that he hadn't seen him as he stood there, his hands stained with the blood of a prey no hunter would boast about." - p 128
"Arnar turned his back to the wall. "What do you think about killing animals?" he asked.
""Me?" asked the young woman, as if he could have meant someone else. "I don't find it pleasant to think about, but it's okay if the animals are meant to be eaten."
""And people?" asked Arnar, without changing his expression or his tone of voice. "Is that all right?"" - p 151
"Friòrikka sounded skeptical. "You know, I read somewhere that in the old days the Greenlanders never had any actual religion. In place of faith they lived with fear." Friòrikka's breathing was regular, as if she were drifting off and speaking almost in her sleep. "That's how I feel. I'm not religious but I feel a persistent fear of something, though I don't know what."" - p 183
If the following is accurate then Greenland is more interesting to me than ever:
"It was an ancient custom; those who lived together in small groups could not afford discord, meaning that those who raised their voices or bickered with each other were looked down on. The only way to express one's disapproval was to remain silent, because words spoken in anger had a way of snowballing, intensifying and provoking hostility that would eventually put the survival of the entire community at risk. The Greenlandic language was thus free of invective and Igimaq was not about to start swearing in Danish." - p 264
That's certainly a lesson that more people shd learn.
There're times when I suspect authors of saying just enuf to stimulate the reader to figure out at least one aspect of a mystery shortly before the answer is presented in full.
"Eyjólfur frowned. "I don't know. He wasn't so awful that people would have thought about killing him." He looked awkwardly at Friòrikka in the hope of support. "Right? It wasn't like that, was it?"
"Friòrikka looked from him to her lap. "No. Definitely not." She abruptly fell silent. It was as if all the air had gone out of her." - p 355
It was after the reading the above (& what led up to it) that I realized who killed _____ & why. I felt satisfied w/ myself when my theory was verified shortly thereafter. I'll bet there's even a term for when authors nudge the reader into solving a problem.
All in all, I admit to begrudgingly finding this bk wise & well thought thru. One of the things that makes my praise for it "begrudging" is that the writing style fairly screams of SOON-TO-BE-A-MAJOR-MOTION-PICTURE - but maybe it's not brutal or shocking enuf for that.
January 13, 2022
Every character is awful. The story is too long. The packing wasn’t… good.
Not gonna continue this series.
(The main character is the worst. Maybe a sign of the times who knows.)
Not gonna continue this series.
(The main character is the worst. Maybe a sign of the times who knows.)
October 21, 2022
Den här boken hade sådan potential, och kanske var det därför den inte helt fångade mig. Det kändes som om den inte riktigt landade i sin ton, det var lite för satiriskt för att fånga en skrämmande stämning och lite för allvarligt för att helt landa i sin humor. Jag hade svårt att engagera mig i mysteriet, särskilt mot slutet. Jag gillade dock karaktärerna, särskilt Bella. Blandade känslor...
January 23, 2016
PROTAGONIST: Thora Gudmundsdottir, lawyer
SETTING: Greenland
SERIES: #4 of 4
RATING: 3.25
Although Thora Gudmunsdottir is a partner in a law firm in Iceland, that doesn’t mean that her work is very exciting. In fact, she is experiencing some boredom with the routine nature of her current work. Thus, when her significant other, Matthew Reich, asks her to take on an assignment from the bank where he is in security, she decides to travel with him to Greenland. They will be trying to prove that the bank does not have any liability in their agreement with a mining company. The mining operation has a work camp in a remote location, and two of its workers have gone missing. The remaining workers have left the site, which has shut down the operation.
Accompanied by a few former workers from the site and the prickly secretary of Thora’s law firm, the group quickly finds the conditions to be extremely difficult. The people in the nearest town view the site as being jinxed and want nothing to do with the group. In fact, only one of its inhabitants is willing to say anything at all about the operation. Additionally, one of the native hunters has a personal stake in the outcome.
The work camp was the perfect suspenseful location—dark for many hours, removed from a populated area, with terribly inhospitable weather. Surprisingly, Sigurdardottir missed the opportunity to use this forbidding setting to heighten tension. There were a few minor instances where scary stuff happened, but I was never on the edge of my seat.
The major flaw in the book for me was that almost all the action was indirect. We rarely witnessed what was happening first hand. Instead, someone would tell Thora about an incident; and the reader would learn what was going on as she recounted the details to one of the other characters. This led to a lot of dialogue and a very slow pace. Frankly, there were times that I was thoroughly bored by the narrative.
Actually, Sigurdardottir writes well. What’s missing is the ability to build excitement and maintain suspense, key ingredients that keep the reader engaged.
SETTING: Greenland
SERIES: #4 of 4
RATING: 3.25
Although Thora Gudmunsdottir is a partner in a law firm in Iceland, that doesn’t mean that her work is very exciting. In fact, she is experiencing some boredom with the routine nature of her current work. Thus, when her significant other, Matthew Reich, asks her to take on an assignment from the bank where he is in security, she decides to travel with him to Greenland. They will be trying to prove that the bank does not have any liability in their agreement with a mining company. The mining operation has a work camp in a remote location, and two of its workers have gone missing. The remaining workers have left the site, which has shut down the operation.
Accompanied by a few former workers from the site and the prickly secretary of Thora’s law firm, the group quickly finds the conditions to be extremely difficult. The people in the nearest town view the site as being jinxed and want nothing to do with the group. In fact, only one of its inhabitants is willing to say anything at all about the operation. Additionally, one of the native hunters has a personal stake in the outcome.
The work camp was the perfect suspenseful location—dark for many hours, removed from a populated area, with terribly inhospitable weather. Surprisingly, Sigurdardottir missed the opportunity to use this forbidding setting to heighten tension. There were a few minor instances where scary stuff happened, but I was never on the edge of my seat.
The major flaw in the book for me was that almost all the action was indirect. We rarely witnessed what was happening first hand. Instead, someone would tell Thora about an incident; and the reader would learn what was going on as she recounted the details to one of the other characters. This led to a lot of dialogue and a very slow pace. Frankly, there were times that I was thoroughly bored by the narrative.
Actually, Sigurdardottir writes well. What’s missing is the ability to build excitement and maintain suspense, key ingredients that keep the reader engaged.
August 16, 2013
Now, I will fully admit, I'm not that into crime thrillers. Everybody and their butts are, apparently, whether it's literary or television. It's already got a mark against it for me.
But I LOVE things set in the polar regions. I adore them. So I thought it might be interesting to give this a shot.
Now, I realize much of the problem is the abominably stiff translation (which is par for the course, as far as translations into English of most novels go). But it's beyond the translation. The characters are bland and wooden and not very believable, and that's the writing. This book also gets incredibly tedious. It starts out strong when there is a slight horror element. But then the plot and characters become dull, with people sitting around being wooden and boring and grousing at each other, and not much at all happening. It needed some heavy editing and some better characters and a more gripping plot. I felt like very little happened, so the book should not need to be over 300 pages. It wants to be like every other polar isolation story, but it fails epically. Yawn.
But I LOVE things set in the polar regions. I adore them. So I thought it might be interesting to give this a shot.
Now, I realize much of the problem is the abominably stiff translation (which is par for the course, as far as translations into English of most novels go). But it's beyond the translation. The characters are bland and wooden and not very believable, and that's the writing. This book also gets incredibly tedious. It starts out strong when there is a slight horror element. But then the plot and characters become dull, with people sitting around being wooden and boring and grousing at each other, and not much at all happening. It needed some heavy editing and some better characters and a more gripping plot. I felt like very little happened, so the book should not need to be over 300 pages. It wants to be like every other polar isolation story, but it fails epically. Yawn.
September 11, 2015
In the beginning of the book, Thora receives a telephone call from her Matthew, her boyfriend. Matthew works for a bank/finance institution and they are having a problem with one of their clients, Berg Technology. The company is involved in a mining project in Greenland. All of the crew took a leave and is now refusing to return to the job. The two men who remained at the site are missing and presumed dead. Another work, a female, went missing a few months earlier. Thora agrees to join Matthew and a crew to investigate the situation and find an understandable reason why people are missing in order to entice the workers to return to their jobs.
I leared a lot about Greenland and cultural traditions of the intuit people. However, I didn;t enjoy the book as much as I have enjoyed the other books in the series. Maybe a little too much culture :)
I leared a lot about Greenland and cultural traditions of the intuit people. However, I didn;t enjoy the book as much as I have enjoyed the other books in the series. Maybe a little too much culture :)
December 10, 2016
This book began with a bang but then got a little tedious as it went on. I was actually glad when I finally finished it. Please, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, do everyone a favor and don't write any more books with characters gone missing in isolated parts of Iceland and Greenland.
March 1, 2025
10/10 for atmosphere but it can always be a little tricky to get the right inflections and emotions from a translated book. I liked the overlapping mysteries and plot lines and I didn’t guess the end at all. I’m looking forward to more in this series!
December 12, 2022
I found this book the most enjoyable so far in this series, although still not near the standard of the author’s Children’s House stories.
The book is centred around Greenland and the culture, hardship and way of life there are portrayed very well. The plot has enough about it to maintain interest in what was about to come and had some good characters, although it did lack any real drama or surprises.
Plenty enough going for it to encourage me to finish the series.
The book is centred around Greenland and the culture, hardship and way of life there are portrayed very well. The plot has enough about it to maintain interest in what was about to come and had some good characters, although it did lack any real drama or surprises.
Plenty enough going for it to encourage me to finish the series.
September 25, 2021
I lean towards a 3.5 rating, as the book kept my interest until the very end, but its wordiness, analytical style and dull characters greatly diminished the suspenseful atmosphere it was supposed to evoke. I am always fascinated by novels taking place in frosty lands, so at least this craving of mine was successfully satisfied.
May 25, 2024
Booooooooooring! I picked it up with great enthusiasm but it just dragged and dragged and dragged, on and on! The characters just go in circles, they do nothing significant, the writer throws red herrings left and right and we learn the truth at the end by a narrative out of the blue with such an improbable way. BORING!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 387 reviews