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The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland
Bill Holm is one of a kind. A Minnesotan of Icelandic ancestry, his travels have taken him all over the world, providing the material for a number of rich and memorable books. In The Windows of Brimnes, Holm travels to Brimnes, his fisherman's cottage on the shore of a creek in northern Iceland. From there, he considers the fate of America - "my home, my citizenship, my burden" - in these provocative essays.
238 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2007
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207 people want to read
About the author
Bill Holm
55 books31 followersBill Holm was an American poet, essayist, memoirist, and musician.
Holm was born on a farm north of Minneota, Minnesota, the grandson of Icelandic immigrants. He attended Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota where he graduated in 1965. Later, he attended the University of Kansas.
Holm won a Fulbright and went to Iceland for a year, which stretched into longer. He continued to visit Iceland so regularly that his friends there helped him find a house in Hofsós. His last book, The Windows of Brimnes, is about his time in Iceland.
He was Professor Emeritus of English at Southwest Minnesota State University, where he taught classes on poetry and literature until his retirement in 2007. Though Minneota was his home, Holm had traveled the world, teaching English in China, spending summers in Iceland and late winters in Arizona, and visiting Europe and Madagascar.
Holm was a frequent guest on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio show and some of his poems were included in Keillor's Writer's Almanac.
Holm was a McKnight Distinguished Artist in 2008, an award that honors Minnesota artists for their life work.
Holm was born on a farm north of Minneota, Minnesota, the grandson of Icelandic immigrants. He attended Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota where he graduated in 1965. Later, he attended the University of Kansas.
Holm won a Fulbright and went to Iceland for a year, which stretched into longer. He continued to visit Iceland so regularly that his friends there helped him find a house in Hofsós. His last book, The Windows of Brimnes, is about his time in Iceland.
He was Professor Emeritus of English at Southwest Minnesota State University, where he taught classes on poetry and literature until his retirement in 2007. Though Minneota was his home, Holm had traveled the world, teaching English in China, spending summers in Iceland and late winters in Arizona, and visiting Europe and Madagascar.
Holm was a frequent guest on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio show and some of his poems were included in Keillor's Writer's Almanac.
Holm was a McKnight Distinguished Artist in 2008, an award that honors Minnesota artists for their life work.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
December 1, 2009
Bill Holm, The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland (Milkweed Editions, 2007)
The first sentence of the jacket copy for this book tells us, “Poet, musician, wit, and polemicist—Bill Holm is one of a kind.” That may be so, but only the last of those shows up in the first fifty pages of The Windows of Brimnes. Pity that, because Iceland is one of those places about which few travel monologues seem to exist, at least in this country, and I've always been rather fascinated with it. Pity more, because I have often considered relocating to a similarly desolate place for much the same reasons Holm lays out here (“[The United States:] has gotten too big, too noisy, too populated, too frenzied—probably too brainlessly religious, media crazed, shopaholic, and warlike for me to see anything but a vast cloud of human white noise.” --20), though my preference has always been the Orkney Isles.
Still, that small passage gives you a taste of the polemic Holm spins here. I'm a fan of rant, usually, but I like it to be punctuated with humor, or at least snide wit. This is a quality that seems entirely absent in Holm. The first two chapters of this book have far less to do with Iceland than they do with Holm's bitterness towards America. Even when I agree with him, it gets old fast. By the time I'd gotten to page twenty, I was eager to exercise the fifty-page rule on this book, and when I got to page fifty, I did. Hopefully I'll find something about Iceland in the near future that actually celebrates Iceland, but from what I got of this book, The Windows of Brimnes is not it. (zero)
The first sentence of the jacket copy for this book tells us, “Poet, musician, wit, and polemicist—Bill Holm is one of a kind.” That may be so, but only the last of those shows up in the first fifty pages of The Windows of Brimnes. Pity that, because Iceland is one of those places about which few travel monologues seem to exist, at least in this country, and I've always been rather fascinated with it. Pity more, because I have often considered relocating to a similarly desolate place for much the same reasons Holm lays out here (“[The United States:] has gotten too big, too noisy, too populated, too frenzied—probably too brainlessly religious, media crazed, shopaholic, and warlike for me to see anything but a vast cloud of human white noise.” --20), though my preference has always been the Orkney Isles.
Still, that small passage gives you a taste of the polemic Holm spins here. I'm a fan of rant, usually, but I like it to be punctuated with humor, or at least snide wit. This is a quality that seems entirely absent in Holm. The first two chapters of this book have far less to do with Iceland than they do with Holm's bitterness towards America. Even when I agree with him, it gets old fast. By the time I'd gotten to page twenty, I was eager to exercise the fifty-page rule on this book, and when I got to page fifty, I did. Hopefully I'll find something about Iceland in the near future that actually celebrates Iceland, but from what I got of this book, The Windows of Brimnes is not it. (zero)
October 2, 2018
To start off, a life hack: when you get to the parts Holm writes about American consumerism, just skip over them. The rest of the book is worth it.
Bill Holm is a Minnesotan of Icelandic descent who bought a modest house in rural Iceland to spend summers in, and occasionally other seasons. He describes a lot about the history of Iceland and the emigration to the United States of his ancestors. As a poet, he really has a knack for describing scenery and emotion.
I don't disagree with his distaste of American consumerism, but he really overdoes it. One paragraph in, I was all, okay, I get it. After that, I would just skip over those paragraphs until he got back to Iceland, and I don't think I missed anything necessary from the story.
I did want to read more about Icelandic history after reading this book, and I think it's a good quality for a book to inspire further reading.
Bill Holm is a Minnesotan of Icelandic descent who bought a modest house in rural Iceland to spend summers in, and occasionally other seasons. He describes a lot about the history of Iceland and the emigration to the United States of his ancestors. As a poet, he really has a knack for describing scenery and emotion.
I don't disagree with his distaste of American consumerism, but he really overdoes it. One paragraph in, I was all, okay, I get it. After that, I would just skip over those paragraphs until he got back to Iceland, and I don't think I missed anything necessary from the story.
I did want to read more about Icelandic history after reading this book, and I think it's a good quality for a book to inspire further reading.
May 10, 2010
I'd been planning to read Holm's book of essays, Windows of Brimnes for quite some time. Not because I'm familiar with his poetry, but because it's a book (travel narrative/memoir) about Iceland. But reading these essays spread over about a month in the best of circumstances--on trains, before bed, with my morning coffee--I found myself constantly going back and forth on how I felt about the collection--and Holm--over all.
On one hand, Holm is observant and anecdotal and rather funny, in a crotchety sort of way. He is nostalgic and sentimental and writes about nature and small communities and memory with an eye for detail and a distinctly romantic lyricism.
On the other, he can be really a pretty irksome narrator, chastising the reader for his/her dependence on cell phones and television, for not being able to play the piano, for not having read Spinoza. (I don't have cable, I read every day--I still can't play Hayden myself and don't feel the worse for it...)
Windows of Brimnes is a distinctly, explicitly post-9/11 meditation, but even when you agree with Holm, it's hard not to be aggravated by his often self-righteous kvetching. It becomes a case of Old Man Yelling a little too often.
But all the same, there are several really wonderful essays in this collection, so even when I was irritated, I found myself returning to the book. I'd even consider reading another one of Holm's essay collections, provided that I had something else to turn to when I'd had enough of his tsk-tsking.
On one hand, Holm is observant and anecdotal and rather funny, in a crotchety sort of way. He is nostalgic and sentimental and writes about nature and small communities and memory with an eye for detail and a distinctly romantic lyricism.
On the other, he can be really a pretty irksome narrator, chastising the reader for his/her dependence on cell phones and television, for not being able to play the piano, for not having read Spinoza. (I don't have cable, I read every day--I still can't play Hayden myself and don't feel the worse for it...)
Windows of Brimnes is a distinctly, explicitly post-9/11 meditation, but even when you agree with Holm, it's hard not to be aggravated by his often self-righteous kvetching. It becomes a case of Old Man Yelling a little too often.
But all the same, there are several really wonderful essays in this collection, so even when I was irritated, I found myself returning to the book. I'd even consider reading another one of Holm's essay collections, provided that I had something else to turn to when I'd had enough of his tsk-tsking.
August 13, 2017
This book was solidly average. I skimmed it, more because I'm interested in Iceland than because the book itself was worth the time.
There were lovely lines and bits -- of sleeping with the windows open to the fjord, their first night in Brimnes -- "There is no such sleep, no such music to calm the interior frenzy, to lullaby your demons into drooling irrelevance. Someday you are going to die. So what? The human race is endlessly foolish. So what? you are broke and almost old. So what? God may or may not exist in some form. So what? It's up to him. Or her. Or neither. Or both. So what? Still light. Always light." (11).
And then the diatribe against Icelanders "selling their dreamland to the aluminum companies" -- okay, sure -- but he does seem to like electricity, aluminum airplanes to fly back and forth, cars to get where he's going, and the capitalism that supports his tenured (?) university job . . .(206).
And yet even that loveliness contains seeds of what was annoying, grating, about the collection. That reference to being broke -- and yet he has enough money to live half the year in one country and half in another. That seems far from broke. And he appears to have been teaching -- perhaps in a tenured position? -- for decades. So if he's broke, that's no one's fault but his own.
The references to his dissatisfactions with the United States were true, justified, and yet trite and also a bit naïve, given that Iceland was the most over-financialized, over-leveraged country by 2007 and imploded fiercely just after this book was published. "After a while, the United States is simply too much: too much religion and not enough gods, too much news and not enough wisdom, too many weapons of mass destruction . . . too much electricity and not enough light" (14) blah, blah, blah, the usual catalog of Romantic-inspired critiques of American life.
And yet my irritation with these elitist, holier-than-thou tendencies is perhaps not justified by the evidence -- Holm is careful to note the complex economic history of Iceland -- colonized by the Danes for centuries, with a large underclass of landless workers denied even the legal right to marry (82).
And another lovely lyrical bit about the urge to look into genealogy: "There was little communication - and probably little love - between the old country and the new. Those who stayed often thought those who left cowards, deserters, even traitors. those who left were often so embittered by the gross poverty, humiliation, failure, disease, and contempt that they wanted no ghosts to follow them across the Atlantic. But a century gone by is good balm for these passions, and leaves in its wake a more attractive human habit: curiosity.
"Who were these people? Am I like them? What did I inherit? not money in the case of Iceland, but bodies, even diseases and infirmities, noses, flat feet, weak eyes, height, musical or literary talent, and, of course, habits of mind, those windows forever coloring our perceptions" (83).
There was occasionally a bit of ignorance of wider social context that was grating -- "Iceland was so far away, so small [in 1550], that Rome's arms were not long enough to enforce priestly celibacy, or else they simply were not interested" -- priestly celibacy was not a thing widely enforced anywhere at that period.
And then another lovely meditation: "What I saw and felt in the melancholy quotient [of old family photos] my cousin Bill wished on me -- a consciousness of my own death, of the disappearance of everything I've loved or done, and also of the extent of my failure and stupidity. If those people are dead, so will I be soon." (104-5).
And there were certainly passages in which I recognized myself: "Language was the equipage with which I traveled. It is not to my credit that I acquired only one of them. What was absent from my first literary efforts was the farm . . My head lived in the world of books, of words . . . I still live in that rarefied world, unless I make a conscious effort to leave it" (129).
And then the boring diatribes -- against Muzak in waiting rooms programmed from afar, "phone us at dinnertime to sell us doodads and we buy" (133). Well, yes, but jeez. You just sound like a cantankerous, sour old crank when you go on like that.
He did say some basic truths plainly: "Americans are foolish to imagine that immigrants always come gladly, or that they are eager to 'melt.' People do not immigrate for 'freedom,' an SUV, welfare payments, or our gods (however you understand them) . . . People more oftenemigrate because they are desperate, and there is nothing left for them in the Old World. And some, like the dead Icelandic horses heaved into the sea, will not survive the experience" (167).
There were lovely lines and bits -- of sleeping with the windows open to the fjord, their first night in Brimnes -- "There is no such sleep, no such music to calm the interior frenzy, to lullaby your demons into drooling irrelevance. Someday you are going to die. So what? The human race is endlessly foolish. So what? you are broke and almost old. So what? God may or may not exist in some form. So what? It's up to him. Or her. Or neither. Or both. So what? Still light. Always light." (11).
And then the diatribe against Icelanders "selling their dreamland to the aluminum companies" -- okay, sure -- but he does seem to like electricity, aluminum airplanes to fly back and forth, cars to get where he's going, and the capitalism that supports his tenured (?) university job . . .(206).
And yet even that loveliness contains seeds of what was annoying, grating, about the collection. That reference to being broke -- and yet he has enough money to live half the year in one country and half in another. That seems far from broke. And he appears to have been teaching -- perhaps in a tenured position? -- for decades. So if he's broke, that's no one's fault but his own.
The references to his dissatisfactions with the United States were true, justified, and yet trite and also a bit naïve, given that Iceland was the most over-financialized, over-leveraged country by 2007 and imploded fiercely just after this book was published. "After a while, the United States is simply too much: too much religion and not enough gods, too much news and not enough wisdom, too many weapons of mass destruction . . . too much electricity and not enough light" (14) blah, blah, blah, the usual catalog of Romantic-inspired critiques of American life.
And yet my irritation with these elitist, holier-than-thou tendencies is perhaps not justified by the evidence -- Holm is careful to note the complex economic history of Iceland -- colonized by the Danes for centuries, with a large underclass of landless workers denied even the legal right to marry (82).
And another lovely lyrical bit about the urge to look into genealogy: "There was little communication - and probably little love - between the old country and the new. Those who stayed often thought those who left cowards, deserters, even traitors. those who left were often so embittered by the gross poverty, humiliation, failure, disease, and contempt that they wanted no ghosts to follow them across the Atlantic. But a century gone by is good balm for these passions, and leaves in its wake a more attractive human habit: curiosity.
"Who were these people? Am I like them? What did I inherit? not money in the case of Iceland, but bodies, even diseases and infirmities, noses, flat feet, weak eyes, height, musical or literary talent, and, of course, habits of mind, those windows forever coloring our perceptions" (83).
There was occasionally a bit of ignorance of wider social context that was grating -- "Iceland was so far away, so small [in 1550], that Rome's arms were not long enough to enforce priestly celibacy, or else they simply were not interested" -- priestly celibacy was not a thing widely enforced anywhere at that period.
And then another lovely meditation: "What I saw and felt in the melancholy quotient [of old family photos] my cousin Bill wished on me -- a consciousness of my own death, of the disappearance of everything I've loved or done, and also of the extent of my failure and stupidity. If those people are dead, so will I be soon." (104-5).
And there were certainly passages in which I recognized myself: "Language was the equipage with which I traveled. It is not to my credit that I acquired only one of them. What was absent from my first literary efforts was the farm . . My head lived in the world of books, of words . . . I still live in that rarefied world, unless I make a conscious effort to leave it" (129).
And then the boring diatribes -- against Muzak in waiting rooms programmed from afar, "phone us at dinnertime to sell us doodads and we buy" (133). Well, yes, but jeez. You just sound like a cantankerous, sour old crank when you go on like that.
He did say some basic truths plainly: "Americans are foolish to imagine that immigrants always come gladly, or that they are eager to 'melt.' People do not immigrate for 'freedom,' an SUV, welfare payments, or our gods (however you understand them) . . . People more oftenemigrate because they are desperate, and there is nothing left for them in the Old World. And some, like the dead Icelandic horses heaved into the sea, will not survive the experience" (167).
October 9, 2013
I came across this just before we took a trip to Iceland and was hoping to get a glimpse of the country not offered in a travel guide. There were some wonderful essays in the collection. I think I liked best "Ethereal Friends" about the flora and fauna of Iceland. But many of the rest didn't hit the right note with me and there was a lot in them that was more a rant against post-9/11 America than a look at the beauty of the land and culture of Iceland. I would recommend that potential travelers to Iceland read only the parts of the book that interest them. It was a bit of a slog for me to read it all.
January 21, 2014
Bill Holm divides his time between Minneota, Minnesota and Brimnes on the northern coast of Iceland where he lives in a little cottage and takes in the view--the long view to the past of his emigrant ancestors and the view across the ocean to his life in America. He is a wonderful essayist, with all the wit, warmth, and insight one could hope for in this slim, but rich volume. I stumbled on this travel narrative while browsing Scandinavian travel books, and I'm so glad I did! I imagine that readers who enjoy Bill Bryson's thoughts on "home" would also find much to love in Bill Holm's book.
March 27, 2013
A wonderful guide to the culture and topography of Iceland, which is often and unfortunately punctuated with shallow and grumpy commentary about American politics and "progress." I agree with the guy, for the most part, yet found his rants tiresome, overgeneralized (All American teachers think their students no longer read well? Really, Bill?) and out of place. By the end, I felt like I was being lectured by an elderly uncle, not guided through a country of sublime beauty and intrigue.
June 27, 2019
I didn't finish this book. Parts are lovely, but it was a bit too pastoral for me, especially when he started translating poems about birds.
June 5, 2017
I am reading about Iceland these days, and I started reading this book just after having installed a Brimnes cabinet (from Ikea) with a window that looks something like the window on the dust jacket of this book... and indeed this is the kind of book that encourages a reader to find meaning in weird coincidences and rambling thoughts. The author Bill Holm explains that "brim" means surf breaking on the beach and "nes" means cape or headland, and he has bought a farm named Brimnes where he gazes out his window to the sea, reflecting on his life as a transplanted American descended from Icelanders. As a genealogist myself, I loved his chapter on genealogy, however I don't agree with him that it is a melancholy pursuit (just because people have passed away?). This is not just a book about Iceland; Holm is reflecting on America which he calls "my home, my citizenship, my burden". Another weird coincidence - I was sent a link to an interview with Mark Crispin Miller - about conspiracy theories - at the same time as I was reading Holm cite Mark Crispin Miller (page 147). Holm has since died, and I am glad he spent his final days gazing out the windows of Brimnes, and wish for us all such a time and place of reflection.
September 12, 2019
It’s sort of an eclectic travel guide of essays for those wishing to explore what life is (and was) like living in Iceland. Holm has you meet many interesting places and characters along the way, including himself and his house. And of course the windows that help frame what he sees and therefore writes about. In some respects Holm’s Brimnes is his version of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond. He is very adept at describing nature. Holm loves to explore family history as well as Icelandic history. My favorite sections are “Brimnes: Name and Place,” “The Melancholy Quotient,” “Silence and Noise,” “The Gift of Horses,” and “The Home of Poetry.” But lots of chapters are music to the ears! In some ways the book is more than about an American in Iceland. It’s also about an American living in America. And about Icelanders living in America (Minnesota).
If you’ve ever dreamed of visiting or living in Iceland, this is a wonderful pace to start your dream journey. Or you can just pick up and go. Bring the book with you!
If you’ve ever dreamed of visiting or living in Iceland, this is a wonderful pace to start your dream journey. Or you can just pick up and go. Bring the book with you!
November 14, 2017
I read this book as part of Modern Mrs. Darcy's 2017 Reading for Fun reading challenge. It is a "book set somewhere you've never been but would like to visit" for me. My husband spent a summer in Iceland when he was a boy and told me some stories, so I thought I would read a book about Iceland. But this book is more than that. It also makes political and philosophical statements about the U.S.
It's clear the author loves Iceland, maybe more than the U.S., which he finds crowded, noisy, and too hawkish. There are lovely descriptions of Iceland and its legends, poetry, birds, and horses. He does get into grumpy old man territory to me though when he criticizes the weed whackers at length for breaking up the silence at his house in Iceland. Still, I enjoyed most of the book.
It's clear the author loves Iceland, maybe more than the U.S., which he finds crowded, noisy, and too hawkish. There are lovely descriptions of Iceland and its legends, poetry, birds, and horses. He does get into grumpy old man territory to me though when he criticizes the weed whackers at length for breaking up the silence at his house in Iceland. Still, I enjoyed most of the book.
January 31, 2018
Holm caught so much of Iceland beautifully here. The book is as haunting and clearly-lined as the land. He was lucky to be able to buy a fisherman's hut in Iceland and write from it every summer. It may no longer be possible, but we can share it with him, and what a gorgeous sharing it is. Sometimes he wanders away into protesting too much, but Lady Macbeth came from the North, too, so, pshaw. Easily forgiven. What is beautiful here is unique. Only Jon Kalman Stefansson is his equal, and that's high praise for them both.
November 5, 2020
I truly enjoyed parts of this book of essays; perhaps my favorite was near the beginning as he approached his home at Brimnes. His description superbly expresses his love of the countryside and his growing excitement at reaching his destination. Some of his rants about how the world has gone downhill, as true as that may be, became tiresome. Having read and loved "Coming Home Crazy" I was a bit disappointed.
May 25, 2018
I loved the parts of this book that talked about Iceland and his family history and upbringing. I hated when he used simple Icelandic themes to jump on his political and religious soapbox. He is a beautiful writer when he jumps off the soapbox and in this book he did not jump off very often!
July 12, 2024
Intriguing book. I’ll be traveling to Iceland and have starting reading about it. I appreciated his writing style, his cantankerous old man complaints, his personal/family history. It’s not quite the travelogue I might’ve expected - no Under the Tuscan Sun - but I liked him and how he was living his life.
August 27, 2017
Bill Holm's books are always worth reading and rereading. Returned to this after a visit to Iceland and an afternoon at Brimnes, Holm's summer home in Hosfos. Perhaps best read with feet firmly planted in the context of place, this was so much better the second time around.
June 27, 2023
I picked up this book at my library because I’ve been to Iceland and have a friend going next summer.
I gave it a 5 star rating because I truly enjoyed his way of writing, many of his points of view, and the poetry.
Sadly he passed away about two years after writing this book.
I gave it a 5 star rating because I truly enjoyed his way of writing, many of his points of view, and the poetry.
Sadly he passed away about two years after writing this book.
September 1, 2018
Bill Holm, I wished I had met you.
February 10, 2019
Excellent writing, and a deeper look into Iceland than your typical travel memoir.
August 3, 2021
Not my usual genre but I am enjoying this venture into something different for me. A true wordsmith now I want to visit and explore Iceland and its birds and silence. I will read more of Bill Holms.
Read
October 25, 2023Good read while in Iceland. Had a little bit of fun facts, a little poetry, and a little satire. (If that is the right word for it). I enjoyed.
December 22, 2024
2.5 stars - The parts of this book focused on Iceland were interesting, though the last essay about Iceland ended the book on a downer. Too many curmudgeonly rants for my taste.
July 6, 2025
Holm presents an intimate and loving picture of his ancestors' homeland along with his wit on music, poetry, politics, and nature.
July 28, 2022
Iceland is such a unique landscape. A mystical place that I feel strongly drawn to, so I loved Holm’s descriptions and history
December 28, 2015
I enjoyed this thoughtful book by author Bill Holm, who divides his time between his home state of Minnesota and a small home named Brimnes that is situated up on a fjord in northern Iceland. Holm is the descendant of Icelanders and grew up with involvement in the Icelandic culture, such as attending an Icelandic Lutheran church in Minnesota. (Church is to Icelanders only an occasional formality to note births, deaths, and baptisms.) Holm is clearly a gifted writer; he writes descriptions with clever usage of words that I never would have thought of, and it all adds to the lovely feel of the book and a better understanding of this sparsely populated corner of Iceland. At times he devotes an entire chapter to muse on the state of political affairs or the importance of leaving behind noise to focus on silence. Just as I was beginning to think, "Okay, can we tie this back to Iceland now?" he returned his thoughts to Brimnes and you have yourself a refreshed understanding for his perspective as he looks through those windows. Holm has nothing kind to say about religious fanaticism, involvement of war, "Muzak," and technological advancements like cell phones and the internet--though interestingly it is through the internet that I learned of his book at all--so enter the book with this in mind. Overall a good read, taking me so long to finish only because I experienced a personal tragedy in the middle of reading it, and it took me a good six weeks to return to reading. Not the book's fault in the least!
My favorite quotes from Holm:
“In the summer, from late May until barely-August, the sun feigns setting not in the west but in the north, though it never really sets at all. It only grazes the surface of the sea for a moment, turning the sky orange, pink, lavender, and gold, then proceeds to pull itself up by its bootstraps to the top of the sky again. For a few hours the world is pale gray and pink, quite bright enough to read whatever newspaper you have acquired to distract yourself from the splendors of the spectacle.”
“But what modern technical noises—for that matter, what music, even Bach—can compete with the music of water, river, and fjord, constantly in motion? To extend the metaphor, what artwork that you hang on your walls can stand up to the splendor of the light that enters this house? It is good that humans labor to make beauty out of light and sound and language, but we must also practice a certain modesty in the presence of our superior—the world out those windows.”
My favorite quotes from Holm:
“In the summer, from late May until barely-August, the sun feigns setting not in the west but in the north, though it never really sets at all. It only grazes the surface of the sea for a moment, turning the sky orange, pink, lavender, and gold, then proceeds to pull itself up by its bootstraps to the top of the sky again. For a few hours the world is pale gray and pink, quite bright enough to read whatever newspaper you have acquired to distract yourself from the splendors of the spectacle.”
“But what modern technical noises—for that matter, what music, even Bach—can compete with the music of water, river, and fjord, constantly in motion? To extend the metaphor, what artwork that you hang on your walls can stand up to the splendor of the light that enters this house? It is good that humans labor to make beauty out of light and sound and language, but we must also practice a certain modesty in the presence of our superior—the world out those windows.”
November 19, 2010
Windows of Brimnes is a set of essays but reads as one story. The pieces are all about Bill Holm's life in Iceland as a Minnesotan who lives summers in a country house. He has no computer, TV, or radio in his Icelandic home. He has a piano and at some point caved and bought a boombox (go crazy!). He writes about the Icelanders in his village, friends and family members in other parts of the country and, importantly, his life in the US. This book says much about the American life of media, consumption, and constant noise and his views of it aren't nearly as glowing as his descriptions of the view from his bedroom window and windows of his car as he drives through some of the wildest, most dramatic landscape imaginable .
May 17, 2009
Love Bill Holm's writing.
Sad news. Bill Holm died at age 65 on Wednesday, February 25. Links on Mpr.
Bill Holm at his best. It is a travel book of sorts, but that's only the beginning. It's true heart is deeper, more melancholy, going far back to ancestors and immigrants and the questions of finding a good home on the planet today. Holm has adopted the whale's peculiar view, one eye looking out on rural Minnesota, the other upon the landscape of the northern coast of Iceland, the brain working to make sense of it all. The essays cover a lot of ground and hit some grand high notes
Sad news. Bill Holm died at age 65 on Wednesday, February 25. Links on Mpr.
Bill Holm at his best. It is a travel book of sorts, but that's only the beginning. It's true heart is deeper, more melancholy, going far back to ancestors and immigrants and the questions of finding a good home on the planet today. Holm has adopted the whale's peculiar view, one eye looking out on rural Minnesota, the other upon the landscape of the northern coast of Iceland, the brain working to make sense of it all. The essays cover a lot of ground and hit some grand high notes
May 30, 2014
I found the book riveting in many ways. I certainly want to visit northern Iceland. I've been to Southern Iceland, and didn't find it very attractive. The
Northern, isolated towns on the sea. Tight communities. Northern lights or the midnight sun would be excellent to se.
The inner curmudgeon in Holm's certainly pops out. But because I agree, I wasn't too distressed by those portions of the book. It was simply tedious in some ways.
I am sorry that I didn't discover Holm's earlier. And am sorry his voice is silent.
Northern, isolated towns on the sea. Tight communities. Northern lights or the midnight sun would be excellent to se.
The inner curmudgeon in Holm's certainly pops out. But because I agree, I wasn't too distressed by those portions of the book. It was simply tedious in some ways.
I am sorry that I didn't discover Holm's earlier. And am sorry his voice is silent.
February 4, 2011
by turns enthralling and a bit dull, this book is full of powerful description, whimsy, melancholy, speculation, wit, philosophy, optimism, pessimism, sound "politics" and a hint at the essence of Iceland (at least as filtered by one writer).
though he waxes maudlin at times -- an holds a romanticized version of the past that makes me a bit uncomfortable -- holm is, in many of the good senses of the word, a poet.
though he waxes maudlin at times -- an holds a romanticized version of the past that makes me a bit uncomfortable -- holm is, in many of the good senses of the word, a poet.
May 4, 2009
An opinionated and insightful take on life, literature, music, culture and nature in Iceland and America by this Icelandic-American poet who unfortunately recently died. Not long before his death, Holm was interviewed on Rick Steves' radio show, where he discussed this book and its themes, which arelikened, in some respects, to Thoreau.
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