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Oraefi: The Wasteland
"Sigurdsson is without a doubt one of the best writers of his generation." —Frettabladid Daily
After a grueling solo expedition on Vatnajökull Glacier, Austrian toponymist Bernhardt Fingerberg returns to civilization, barely alive, and into the care of Dr. Lassi. The doctor, suspicious of his story, attempts to discover his real motives for venturing into the treacherous wastelands of Iceland—but the secrets she unravels may be more dangerous than they're worth.
Ófeigur Sigurðsson (b. 1975) has published six books of poetry and two novels, including Jón (2010), the first Icelandic novel to receive the European Union Prize for Literature.
After a grueling solo expedition on Vatnajökull Glacier, Austrian toponymist Bernhardt Fingerberg returns to civilization, barely alive, and into the care of Dr. Lassi. The doctor, suspicious of his story, attempts to discover his real motives for venturing into the treacherous wastelands of Iceland—but the secrets she unravels may be more dangerous than they're worth.
Ófeigur Sigurðsson (b. 1975) has published six books of poetry and two novels, including Jón (2010), the first Icelandic novel to receive the European Union Prize for Literature.
334 pages, Paperback
First published October 23, 2014
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About the author
Ófeigur Sigurðsson
20 books23 followersÓfeigur Sigurðsson is an Icelandic poet, novelist and translator. He was born in Reykjavík on November 2, 1975.
Ófeigur studied philosophy at the University of Iceland and graduated in 2007, writing a thesis on the work of Georges Bataille. In 2001 he published his first book of poetry, Skál fyrir skammdeginu, with the avant-garde press Nykur. Ófeigur has to this date published seven books of poetry, four novels and several translations.
Ófeigur was the first Icelander to be awarded the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL) in 2011 for the novel Jon.
In 2014 he published the novel Öræfi [Oraefi: The Wasteland] to critical acclaim as well as great commercial success, it was the third best selling book of the year with five printings selling out in three months. It received The Icelandic Booksellers‘ Prize 2014 and The Icelandic Literary Prize in 2015.
His works have been widely translated and Oraefi: The Wasteland is set to be released in the United States in March of 2018. Ófeigur currently lives in Antwerpen, Belgium.
Ófeigur studied philosophy at the University of Iceland and graduated in 2007, writing a thesis on the work of Georges Bataille. In 2001 he published his first book of poetry, Skál fyrir skammdeginu, with the avant-garde press Nykur. Ófeigur has to this date published seven books of poetry, four novels and several translations.
Ófeigur was the first Icelander to be awarded the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL) in 2011 for the novel Jon.
In 2014 he published the novel Öræfi [Oraefi: The Wasteland] to critical acclaim as well as great commercial success, it was the third best selling book of the year with five printings selling out in three months. It received The Icelandic Booksellers‘ Prize 2014 and The Icelandic Literary Prize in 2015.
His works have been widely translated and Oraefi: The Wasteland is set to be released in the United States in March of 2018. Ófeigur currently lives in Antwerpen, Belgium.
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April 10, 2019
Now longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award - and my personal favourite to win
Death metal is one of the most challenging genres that ever existed, in death metal there are swift chapter divisions and the feelings and emotions lie deep, the way burning magma does, down in the dark glow of the human soul, apathetic and venting simultaneously.
Öræfi: The Wasteland has been translated from Ófeigur Sigurðsson's Icelandic original by Lytton Smith, who provides an illuminated afterword which demonstrates the care and passion that went into this translation, and published by the consistently excellent independent US publisher Deep Vellum Press.
That the protagonist of this novel is not only called Bernharður, but was born in Austria gives a rather large clue to one of the author's key influences. Unlike Thomas Bernhard, Bernharður is rather kind about Vienna, and while certainly darkly humorous less prone to bilious scorn, but the novel certainly inherits Thomas Bernhard's style of reports of reports of reported speech, leading to sentences like the following which closes the first section, much as mathematical brackets close a formula.
I’ll keep this mysterious treasure here with me instead and think of you, said Snorri’s Edda in the trunk, Bernharður said and the Interpreter interpreted, Dr Lassi wrote in the report, or so Bernharður wrote to me in a letter, Spring 2003.
An explanation is in order. Thomas was born, as mentioned in Vienna, in 1975, of an Icelandic father and Swiss mother ("an EFTA love affair"). His mother returned traumatised from an event on a trip to Iceland while he was younger. At the time of the novel's story, as a late-20s research student in toponymy he set out to visit the remote district of Iceland, Öræfi - meaning the wasteland - it's name stemming from the devastation wrought on the area in 1362 when the Öræfajökull volcano erupted (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Öræfa...) destroying the Litla-Hérað region. It was 40 years before anyone resettled the area - and it was given the name Öræfi, literally an area without a harbour, but which became a synonym for wasteland. The main part of the novel opens:
I was past exhaustion, writes the Austrian toponymist Bernharður Fingurbjörg in his letter to me, spring 2003. I crawled, Bernharður continues, into the Skaftafell Visitor Center, where I promptly lost consciousness. When I came to, a crowd of people was staring at me, but no one came over to help; my head was swimming; there was a large, open wound in my thigh, reminiscent of a crater, and I thought I saw glowing lava well from it, a burning torrent pouring itself out like a serpent writhing its spinal course towards a head that was actually a seething magma chamber. I was delirious. For a long time, no one did anything, then finally after much staring and gesturing a doctor was called; she happened to be on a camping trip with her family in Skaftafell at the time and came running full tilt to attend to me. I cannot find my mother, I told the doctor in my delirium, I cannot find my mother, I remember saying. I started to cry.
The doctor, Dr Lassi, is actually a veterinary surgeon who, to save his life, tranquilises him with a powerful animal sedative and amputates his wounded leg (frostbite and septicemia and gangrene had begun to develop) and, something she describes with a little too much relish, much of his crotch. While under sedation he raves in a mixture of Icelandic and his native German, for which she uses a (female) translator, who is referred to simply as the Interpreter. She writes up her report, ostensibly for a medical journal, but actually as she tells the Interpreter, who she is also trying to seduce, she aims for this to be:
A book entirely unlike anything anyone has ever written in Iceland, a medical history of Bernharður with biographical overtones yet mostly about the wound to his thigh and the amputation; a medical history with a biographical element but all wrapped up in national lore, even, my darling, global sensibilities.
Later Bernharður reads her report and uses it to reconstruct what happens, in a letter he writes to the author, someone he met on a bus to the Öræfi region. That letter is discovered some time later when Bernharður's possession, but not he himself, are later disgorged by a glacier in the remote wilderness. The glacier gives back what it takes, they say, and eventually brings it to light, are the novel's opening words, and a recurrent theme. And so when we hear from another character, Snorri's Edda (their name itself a reference to an epic piece of 13th century Icelandic literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose_Edda), we get, as mentioned:
I’ll keep this mysterious treasure here with me instead and think of you, said Snorri’s Edda in the trunk, Bernharður said and the Interpreter interpreted, Dr Lassi wrote in the report, or so Bernharður wrote to me in a letter, Spring 2003.
Quite how someone who had just had one leg removed could get back out on the glacier so quickly, to be able to vanish, is one of the book's mysteries, as it what befell his mother years earlier, and indeed the end of the novel deliberately rather adds to the confusion by posing different alternatives to the origin of the letter and the reality of the story we are reading.
Toponymy is one key to the novel, in a country whose literature and history is founded on sagas, and one wonderful extended paragraph reads:
Place names often describe the terrain or soil, I wrote in the notebook, place names can describe local conditions or landmarks themselves; really, one could say the place names are the landmark, symbolically; they are often formed by the lay of the land or its landmarks, the shape or relation of one place to another, they often give the hint of mineral strata or some other geographical formations, or vegetation, they might describe color, can be metaphorical names, symbols, they are boundary markers, shore markers, the boundaries of pastures, they are taken from livestock, wildlife, from farming, from work methods or procedures, shipping routes and anchor points, trails, plentiful resources, travelogues, sundry incidents and events, battles, weather patterns, temporal markers, legends and oral histories, the names of people, doppelgängers, references to pagan religions, to Christian faith, the Church, political assemblies; place names are set upon landmarks and landmarks show people the way; place names are a testament to the people who settle a land or region, to their life, work and thoughts; place names are precious cultural histories documenting ancient eras, our attitudes today and a view to the future; place names are themselves people.
But this is a novel where digression is a virtue. Amongst other topics we get:
- a history of the laconic and hardy souls of the Öræfi region, who ring each other up but then say nothing, simply enjoying the mutual silence. When one is prevailed upon to write an account of a particularly epic and dangerous journey undertaken in extreme weather (to deliver the post on time - shades of Jón Kalman Stefánsson's Heaven and Hell trilogy), he entitles it "Minor Incidents During a Pleasant Journey."
- a discussion of music starting with Haydn but which segues into a discussion of death metal, notably the iconic Blessed are the Sick by Morbid Angel, the album cover taken from jean Delville's Les trésors de Satan.
- a Bolanoesque extended list of the various suicides, and attempted suicides, in the region over the last few hundred years
And towards the novel's end, a diatribe against the reforestation of Iceland and the odd 'animal welfare' rules that require wild animals to be slaughtered for their own welfare. Here the voice of Thomas Bernhard really does come through his namesake:
... my parents were tormentors of animals but they were simply performing their duty, they were not evil by nature, just low-minded and with bad taste, my parents were Eichmannic animal torturers for the state and I am an animal torturer for the state, whole generations are stuck in this torture mine, extermination is our ever-present guiding light, always the only solution ...
Highly recommended and one to watch in the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards
An excerpt:
https://www.catranslation.org/online-...
Interview with the author:
https://grapevine.is/culture/literatu...
Interview with the translator:
https://thisissplice.co.uk/2018/09/05...
Review (from the same, excellent, website):
https://thisissplice.co.uk/2018/09/03...
Death metal is one of the most challenging genres that ever existed, in death metal there are swift chapter divisions and the feelings and emotions lie deep, the way burning magma does, down in the dark glow of the human soul, apathetic and venting simultaneously.
Öræfi: The Wasteland has been translated from Ófeigur Sigurðsson's Icelandic original by Lytton Smith, who provides an illuminated afterword which demonstrates the care and passion that went into this translation, and published by the consistently excellent independent US publisher Deep Vellum Press.
That the protagonist of this novel is not only called Bernharður, but was born in Austria gives a rather large clue to one of the author's key influences. Unlike Thomas Bernhard, Bernharður is rather kind about Vienna, and while certainly darkly humorous less prone to bilious scorn, but the novel certainly inherits Thomas Bernhard's style of reports of reports of reported speech, leading to sentences like the following which closes the first section, much as mathematical brackets close a formula.
I’ll keep this mysterious treasure here with me instead and think of you, said Snorri’s Edda in the trunk, Bernharður said and the Interpreter interpreted, Dr Lassi wrote in the report, or so Bernharður wrote to me in a letter, Spring 2003.
An explanation is in order. Thomas was born, as mentioned in Vienna, in 1975, of an Icelandic father and Swiss mother ("an EFTA love affair"). His mother returned traumatised from an event on a trip to Iceland while he was younger. At the time of the novel's story, as a late-20s research student in toponymy he set out to visit the remote district of Iceland, Öræfi - meaning the wasteland - it's name stemming from the devastation wrought on the area in 1362 when the Öræfajökull volcano erupted (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Öræfa...) destroying the Litla-Hérað region. It was 40 years before anyone resettled the area - and it was given the name Öræfi, literally an area without a harbour, but which became a synonym for wasteland. The main part of the novel opens:
I was past exhaustion, writes the Austrian toponymist Bernharður Fingurbjörg in his letter to me, spring 2003. I crawled, Bernharður continues, into the Skaftafell Visitor Center, where I promptly lost consciousness. When I came to, a crowd of people was staring at me, but no one came over to help; my head was swimming; there was a large, open wound in my thigh, reminiscent of a crater, and I thought I saw glowing lava well from it, a burning torrent pouring itself out like a serpent writhing its spinal course towards a head that was actually a seething magma chamber. I was delirious. For a long time, no one did anything, then finally after much staring and gesturing a doctor was called; she happened to be on a camping trip with her family in Skaftafell at the time and came running full tilt to attend to me. I cannot find my mother, I told the doctor in my delirium, I cannot find my mother, I remember saying. I started to cry.
The doctor, Dr Lassi, is actually a veterinary surgeon who, to save his life, tranquilises him with a powerful animal sedative and amputates his wounded leg (frostbite and septicemia and gangrene had begun to develop) and, something she describes with a little too much relish, much of his crotch. While under sedation he raves in a mixture of Icelandic and his native German, for which she uses a (female) translator, who is referred to simply as the Interpreter. She writes up her report, ostensibly for a medical journal, but actually as she tells the Interpreter, who she is also trying to seduce, she aims for this to be:
A book entirely unlike anything anyone has ever written in Iceland, a medical history of Bernharður with biographical overtones yet mostly about the wound to his thigh and the amputation; a medical history with a biographical element but all wrapped up in national lore, even, my darling, global sensibilities.
Later Bernharður reads her report and uses it to reconstruct what happens, in a letter he writes to the author, someone he met on a bus to the Öræfi region. That letter is discovered some time later when Bernharður's possession, but not he himself, are later disgorged by a glacier in the remote wilderness. The glacier gives back what it takes, they say, and eventually brings it to light, are the novel's opening words, and a recurrent theme. And so when we hear from another character, Snorri's Edda (their name itself a reference to an epic piece of 13th century Icelandic literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose_Edda), we get, as mentioned:
I’ll keep this mysterious treasure here with me instead and think of you, said Snorri’s Edda in the trunk, Bernharður said and the Interpreter interpreted, Dr Lassi wrote in the report, or so Bernharður wrote to me in a letter, Spring 2003.
Quite how someone who had just had one leg removed could get back out on the glacier so quickly, to be able to vanish, is one of the book's mysteries, as it what befell his mother years earlier, and indeed the end of the novel deliberately rather adds to the confusion by posing different alternatives to the origin of the letter and the reality of the story we are reading.
Toponymy is one key to the novel, in a country whose literature and history is founded on sagas, and one wonderful extended paragraph reads:
Place names often describe the terrain or soil, I wrote in the notebook, place names can describe local conditions or landmarks themselves; really, one could say the place names are the landmark, symbolically; they are often formed by the lay of the land or its landmarks, the shape or relation of one place to another, they often give the hint of mineral strata or some other geographical formations, or vegetation, they might describe color, can be metaphorical names, symbols, they are boundary markers, shore markers, the boundaries of pastures, they are taken from livestock, wildlife, from farming, from work methods or procedures, shipping routes and anchor points, trails, plentiful resources, travelogues, sundry incidents and events, battles, weather patterns, temporal markers, legends and oral histories, the names of people, doppelgängers, references to pagan religions, to Christian faith, the Church, political assemblies; place names are set upon landmarks and landmarks show people the way; place names are a testament to the people who settle a land or region, to their life, work and thoughts; place names are precious cultural histories documenting ancient eras, our attitudes today and a view to the future; place names are themselves people.
But this is a novel where digression is a virtue. Amongst other topics we get:
- a history of the laconic and hardy souls of the Öræfi region, who ring each other up but then say nothing, simply enjoying the mutual silence. When one is prevailed upon to write an account of a particularly epic and dangerous journey undertaken in extreme weather (to deliver the post on time - shades of Jón Kalman Stefánsson's Heaven and Hell trilogy), he entitles it "Minor Incidents During a Pleasant Journey."
- a discussion of music starting with Haydn but which segues into a discussion of death metal, notably the iconic Blessed are the Sick by Morbid Angel, the album cover taken from jean Delville's Les trésors de Satan.
- a Bolanoesque extended list of the various suicides, and attempted suicides, in the region over the last few hundred years
And towards the novel's end, a diatribe against the reforestation of Iceland and the odd 'animal welfare' rules that require wild animals to be slaughtered for their own welfare. Here the voice of Thomas Bernhard really does come through his namesake:
... my parents were tormentors of animals but they were simply performing their duty, they were not evil by nature, just low-minded and with bad taste, my parents were Eichmannic animal torturers for the state and I am an animal torturer for the state, whole generations are stuck in this torture mine, extermination is our ever-present guiding light, always the only solution ...
Highly recommended and one to watch in the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards
An excerpt:
https://www.catranslation.org/online-...
Interview with the author:
https://grapevine.is/culture/literatu...
Interview with the translator:
https://thisissplice.co.uk/2018/09/05...
Review (from the same, excellent, website):
https://thisissplice.co.uk/2018/09/03...
November 25, 2018
Öræfi is a remarkable book, and I am grateful for this translation into English, so we can take part in this unique narrative journey. The Icelandic names, particularly of places, may be a little challenging for the English speaker to get used to, but since the book concerns itself so much with the field of toponymy the place names are deeply explored and illuminated throughout the book. The narrator is a toponymist who set out on this journey to the titular wasteland to explore the relationship between the place names in this remote region and the history of the places themselves. The journey is also steeped in questions the narrator has about a traumatic experience his mother had in Iceland, and his own connection to the land through his ancestry.
There are so many layers to this novel that it's hard to condense them all into a simple review or summary. It is a layered narrative, with stories unfolding within stories like geological strata. At the heart of the story is the narrator Bernharður, the toponymist, though the tale is presented to us as filtered through a translator to a veterinarian writing a medical report (no other doctors were available), and then whole thing is then being told to the author of the book by Bernharður through a letter. It took me a while to realize that was what was going on. To me this suggests an oral storytelling tradition, wherein the narrative shifts slightly through each teller—the kind of storytelling from which Icelandic sagas might arise.
The layered narrative is one of several experimental techniques the author uses. Another device he uses is the writing of extensive lists, such as 15 pages of descriptions of 17th and 18th century suicides, lists of equipment, lists of books on Iceland that the narrator is given to carry around in the coffin-like trunk that accompanies him on his travels (and which he even sleeps in). The text also digresses into long stream-of-consciousness reflections by several other character—the veterinarian, Dr. Lassi, and a garrulous figure he meets along the way named Guest, though he is usually referred to as The Regular. Peoples' names tell us a lot about them, just as place names do.
A central theme in the book is the deterioration of the Icelandic environment. The wasteland was formed by an eruption in 1362, but even more destructive seem to be the powers of tourism and agriculture. Men try to control that which is wild and natural—from the fruitless attempts to impose rules on the wild roaming sheep, to the consequences of agriculture. Another theme is burial: people buried by avalanches, treasure ships buried in the ice, memories and truths buried beneath the passage of time. I'm just listing some themes here, not trying to write a thesis, but it's remarkable just how much is packed into this book and how rich it is. Let's hope some more of this writer's work is made available in English.
There are so many layers to this novel that it's hard to condense them all into a simple review or summary. It is a layered narrative, with stories unfolding within stories like geological strata. At the heart of the story is the narrator Bernharður, the toponymist, though the tale is presented to us as filtered through a translator to a veterinarian writing a medical report (no other doctors were available), and then whole thing is then being told to the author of the book by Bernharður through a letter. It took me a while to realize that was what was going on. To me this suggests an oral storytelling tradition, wherein the narrative shifts slightly through each teller—the kind of storytelling from which Icelandic sagas might arise.
The layered narrative is one of several experimental techniques the author uses. Another device he uses is the writing of extensive lists, such as 15 pages of descriptions of 17th and 18th century suicides, lists of equipment, lists of books on Iceland that the narrator is given to carry around in the coffin-like trunk that accompanies him on his travels (and which he even sleeps in). The text also digresses into long stream-of-consciousness reflections by several other character—the veterinarian, Dr. Lassi, and a garrulous figure he meets along the way named Guest, though he is usually referred to as The Regular. Peoples' names tell us a lot about them, just as place names do.
A central theme in the book is the deterioration of the Icelandic environment. The wasteland was formed by an eruption in 1362, but even more destructive seem to be the powers of tourism and agriculture. Men try to control that which is wild and natural—from the fruitless attempts to impose rules on the wild roaming sheep, to the consequences of agriculture. Another theme is burial: people buried by avalanches, treasure ships buried in the ice, memories and truths buried beneath the passage of time. I'm just listing some themes here, not trying to write a thesis, but it's remarkable just how much is packed into this book and how rich it is. Let's hope some more of this writer's work is made available in English.
April 12, 2019
Longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Award, this is the best book I have read this year! It is written in what I call a “maximalist” style, filled with many words, facts, points of view and historic events and I probably only took in a fraction of the totality of the novel!
At heart it is a thriller about a man alone on a glacier in Iceland. I learned a lot about toponymy (the study of place names) which he is there to study. So much goes on, both actual and imagined, that at times it is difficult to understand exactly what really is happening. I LOVE this kind of writing and think it deserves several more readings to truly comprehend the many layers and complexity.
Will it make the Longlist? YES, but I will read this again regardless!
At heart it is a thriller about a man alone on a glacier in Iceland. I learned a lot about toponymy (the study of place names) which he is there to study. So much goes on, both actual and imagined, that at times it is difficult to understand exactly what really is happening. I LOVE this kind of writing and think it deserves several more readings to truly comprehend the many layers and complexity.
Will it make the Longlist? YES, but I will read this again regardless!
January 27, 2019
Rarely have I read a book with such high highs that like clockwork dampened my resulting euphoria every single time with what I felt was tantamount to daring tedium. If it weren't for the latter, this would have easily been a 5+ star evaluation. It's a good thing I am a compulsive and steadfast reader, so overall I thought it to be the best read in about a year. If you like obscurity, diatribes, tongue-in-cheek cultural romanticism, and navel-gazing philosophy, this book may also bring you great joy interspersed with profound frustration.
July 19, 2019
Outstanding. Can't recommend this highly enough. Ostensibly the story of an Austrian scientist lost on an Icelandic glacier it turns into a history of hardship, landscape and place naming in Iceland. Peppered with nuggets of dry Icelandic humour.
July 12, 2023
En litterær tour-de-force ala Thomas Bernhard sat på og omkring Islands mest brutale naturegn, Óræfajökull (Vildmarksjøkel).
En østrigsk stednavneforsker falder i en gletsjerspalte, og får med besvær slæbt sig til det lokale turistkontor, hvor den lokale dyrlæge Dr. Lassi amputerer hans ene ben, balle og lem. Fra sygesengen forsøger han at genfortælle episoden, men i sin bedøvelsesrus fabler han på en blanding af tysk og islandsk. Her følger en strid strøm af barndomsminder, historisk viden, naturfakta, stednavneforskning og gengivelse af andres svadaer om Islandsk natur, modernisme, dødsmetal, kommen, selvmordsrapporter og meget mere.
Sammenligningen med Thomas Bernhard er ikke til at tage fejl af, og forfatteren lægger ikke skjul på indflydelsen, da værkets protagonist ikke blot hedder Bernhard, men også er østriger og klassisk central-europæisk intellektuel der føles som et levn fra det forrige århundrede.
Men det er i stilen at sammenligningen virkelig springer i øjnene; teksten er et skrevet brev der oversættes og derefter nedfældes i en rapport, som så læses højt. Det fører til gentagende eksempler på sætninger som denne: "... sagde Snorris Edda i rejsekufferten, siger Bernhard, tolker tolken, skriver Dr. Lassi i rapporten, skrev Bernhard til mig i brevet fra foråret 2003".
Teksten har ingen linjebrud, nærmest ingen punktummer (i den danske oversættelse bruges konsekvent kommaer, også ved helsætninger), karakterer går på vanvidsmonologer, ofte med talrige sidespring der kan vare sidevis.
Det moderne menneske spiddes side op og side ned; teknologiske "fremskridt", vores behandling af naturen, mangel på essentielle værdier, ensporede individer der ikke kan sætte pris på kvalitet, tradition og historie.
Og så turismen, ikke mindst den forbandende turisme, symbolet på menneskets respektløse besudlen af naturen og grunden til Islands moralske forfald.
Alle disse elementer er så utroligt "Bernhardske" at man kan ikke kan undgå at bemærke det (hvis man har læst Bernhard). Men det er ikke en slap imitation, eller gudedyrkelse. Ófeigur gør det ekstremt tydeligt at han forsøger at skrive en roman i Bernhards stil - og han rammer stilen nær perfekt - men formår samtidig at gøre værket til sit eget.
Her er det indgående kendskab til Islandsk kultur- og geologihistorie et afgørende faktum. Bogen er proppet med detaljer fra lokale egnsmagasiner, annaler, sogneoptællinger og mere der gør bogen til et distinkt Islandsk værk. Thomas Bernhards kritik af de intellektuelle cirkler i Wien, erstattes af en ubønhørlig kritik af turismens indtog på vulkanøen (som stærk kontrast til "Landnamstiden" - perioden inden bosættelse på Island), på en måde der både er sjov og tankevækkende, og ikke lige så "sur-gammel-mand-agtig" som hos østrigeren.
Bogen er umulig at opsummere, der er simpelthen for meget stof pakket ind på disse sider til at gengive det troværdigt.
Jeg har ikke engang nævnt at der er en lang analyse af dødsmetalbandet Morbid Angel's relation til belgisk symbolisme (!), og en sektion om kommen (krydderiet) der fik mig til at grine højlydt.
Det burde blive kedeligt eller udmattende, men jeg var stimuleret hele vejen igennem af den særlige stil, tonsvis af viden og en god klat humor.
Anbefales til læsere der kan tåle en barrage af fablen side op og side ned. Til fans af "maximalistisk litteratur" som hos Pynchon, og selvfølgelig til fans af Thomas Bernhard.
En østrigsk stednavneforsker falder i en gletsjerspalte, og får med besvær slæbt sig til det lokale turistkontor, hvor den lokale dyrlæge Dr. Lassi amputerer hans ene ben, balle og lem. Fra sygesengen forsøger han at genfortælle episoden, men i sin bedøvelsesrus fabler han på en blanding af tysk og islandsk. Her følger en strid strøm af barndomsminder, historisk viden, naturfakta, stednavneforskning og gengivelse af andres svadaer om Islandsk natur, modernisme, dødsmetal, kommen, selvmordsrapporter og meget mere.
Sammenligningen med Thomas Bernhard er ikke til at tage fejl af, og forfatteren lægger ikke skjul på indflydelsen, da værkets protagonist ikke blot hedder Bernhard, men også er østriger og klassisk central-europæisk intellektuel der føles som et levn fra det forrige århundrede.
Men det er i stilen at sammenligningen virkelig springer i øjnene; teksten er et skrevet brev der oversættes og derefter nedfældes i en rapport, som så læses højt. Det fører til gentagende eksempler på sætninger som denne: "... sagde Snorris Edda i rejsekufferten, siger Bernhard, tolker tolken, skriver Dr. Lassi i rapporten, skrev Bernhard til mig i brevet fra foråret 2003".
Teksten har ingen linjebrud, nærmest ingen punktummer (i den danske oversættelse bruges konsekvent kommaer, også ved helsætninger), karakterer går på vanvidsmonologer, ofte med talrige sidespring der kan vare sidevis.
Det moderne menneske spiddes side op og side ned; teknologiske "fremskridt", vores behandling af naturen, mangel på essentielle værdier, ensporede individer der ikke kan sætte pris på kvalitet, tradition og historie.
Og så turismen, ikke mindst den forbandende turisme, symbolet på menneskets respektløse besudlen af naturen og grunden til Islands moralske forfald.
Alle disse elementer er så utroligt "Bernhardske" at man kan ikke kan undgå at bemærke det (hvis man har læst Bernhard). Men det er ikke en slap imitation, eller gudedyrkelse. Ófeigur gør det ekstremt tydeligt at han forsøger at skrive en roman i Bernhards stil - og han rammer stilen nær perfekt - men formår samtidig at gøre værket til sit eget.
Her er det indgående kendskab til Islandsk kultur- og geologihistorie et afgørende faktum. Bogen er proppet med detaljer fra lokale egnsmagasiner, annaler, sogneoptællinger og mere der gør bogen til et distinkt Islandsk værk. Thomas Bernhards kritik af de intellektuelle cirkler i Wien, erstattes af en ubønhørlig kritik af turismens indtog på vulkanøen (som stærk kontrast til "Landnamstiden" - perioden inden bosættelse på Island), på en måde der både er sjov og tankevækkende, og ikke lige så "sur-gammel-mand-agtig" som hos østrigeren.
Bogen er umulig at opsummere, der er simpelthen for meget stof pakket ind på disse sider til at gengive det troværdigt.
Jeg har ikke engang nævnt at der er en lang analyse af dødsmetalbandet Morbid Angel's relation til belgisk symbolisme (!), og en sektion om kommen (krydderiet) der fik mig til at grine højlydt.
Det burde blive kedeligt eller udmattende, men jeg var stimuleret hele vejen igennem af den særlige stil, tonsvis af viden og en god klat humor.
Anbefales til læsere der kan tåle en barrage af fablen side op og side ned. Til fans af "maximalistisk litteratur" som hos Pynchon, og selvfølgelig til fans af Thomas Bernhard.
September 24, 2020
Tjah hvað skal segja. Á köflum er hún ótrúleg,fallega skrifuð, myndmálið stórkostlegt og heldur manni fullkomlega. Á köflum er þetta upptalning á sögulegum staðreyndum þar sem maður týnist fullkomlega. Endirinn er flottur, með ádeilu á neysluhyggju og dásömun á íslenskri náttúru. 4 stjörnur af því ég hafði gaman að henni, 2 stjörnur fyrir hversu erfið lestrar hún gat verið. 3 stjörnur að meðaltali
December 12, 2019
I have a lot of thoughts about this book.
The first is that I am deeply thankful there are organizations sponsoring such great international works to be published in English language and glad to have had the opportunity to read Oraefi.
That said - this was a *massive slog*. There are things I liked about this book and how very Icelandic it is in themes - no way an outsider could have captured the country like this. Then there are the things I disliked, for example, the Thoreau-like trains of thought that rambled on aimlessly for pages. There are things I downright hated, like suffering through twenty or more consecutive pages of accounts of every notable Icelandic suicide since the 17th century. (What. the. f--k.) But then, goddammit, there are things I was in awe of. And the post scriptum just shook me, after everything the author put us through before, we are left with final pages of pure beauty.
Who should read this? Certainly Iceland fanatics and those who like to think deeply about the idea of place and what it means to be from somewhere, to visit somewhere as a tourist. But please, read at your own risk.
The first is that I am deeply thankful there are organizations sponsoring such great international works to be published in English language and glad to have had the opportunity to read Oraefi.
That said - this was a *massive slog*. There are things I liked about this book and how very Icelandic it is in themes - no way an outsider could have captured the country like this. Then there are the things I disliked, for example, the Thoreau-like trains of thought that rambled on aimlessly for pages. There are things I downright hated, like suffering through twenty or more consecutive pages of accounts of every notable Icelandic suicide since the 17th century. (What. the. f--k.) But then, goddammit, there are things I was in awe of. And the post scriptum just shook me, after everything the author put us through before, we are left with final pages of pure beauty.
Who should read this? Certainly Iceland fanatics and those who like to think deeply about the idea of place and what it means to be from somewhere, to visit somewhere as a tourist. But please, read at your own risk.
December 8, 2018
I love that there is a nonprofit publisher in Dallas that puts out literature like this, so I definitely am in full support of this effort. But it's written in a very fluid style (no quotation marks to indicate dialogue; stories nested within stories within stories...) that, although well executed, is not my favorite writing style. There are some digressions that I simply skimmed, such as one on death metal and Belgian symbolism and another that is basically a catalogue of suicides in Iceland from the 17th and 18th centuries. I strongly dislike the character named The Regular because he's the primary author of these long-winded digressions that, to me, are hard to follow. That said, there are some anecdotes about glacial exploration and the ruggedness of locals that I enjoyed reading very much. It has a surprise ending that you might like, unless it makes you question everything you'd just read in the preceding 300+ pages.
January 2, 2015
Bókin byrjaði í fimm stjörnum, tók dýfu með upptalningarstílnum um miðbikið (þeir sem hafa lesið vita hvað ég á við) en lokaniðurstaðan er einhvers staðar milli þrists og fjarka svo ég smelli hér á fjórar stjörnur. Öfgakenndar og fyndnar persónur, skemmtilegar observasjónir á Íslendinginn í dag sem fyrr á öldum, og sérstakur saga-inní-sögu-inní-sögu stíll héldu athygli minni. Blörbið frá bókaútgefandanum er heldur Arnaldar-og Yrsulegt en vonandi veit fólk að þetta er enginn reyfari. Eftir Öræfin tók ég upp Skáldsögu um Jón einnig eftir Ófeig og mæli eiginlega með því að lesa þá bók fyrst.
December 1, 2014
Veit eiginlega ekki hvað ég á að segja um þessa bók. Átti í vandræðum með að klára hana og satt að segja píndi mig til þess. Stíllinn er mjög sérstakur þar sem verið er að segja sögur inni í sögunni og mikið um upptalningar. Sem dæmi um upptalningar þá er rakið á 11 bls sjálfsvíg fólks á Íslandi á bilinu 1600 til 1900 :/ Margir mjög hrifnir af bókinni en hún höfðaði ekki til mín
June 3, 2019
I wanted to like it. I Did like bits of it but it was just too much everything.
June 30, 2020
Is it possible for a piece of writing to give the reader an experience of place that compares to, or is even greater than that of an image? This question comes from the translator, Lytton Smith, in his afterword for Öræfi: The Wasteland by Ófeigur Sigurðsson which I’ve just finished.
He's goes some way to answering it.
The protagonist, Bernharður, an Austrian of an Icelandic father and Swiss mother, ends up in Iceland because of a story he read in National Geographical when he was six years old. He is a toponymist, striving to discover how place names reflect their residents, as well as the rugged beauty of the region.
This is a unique book; a thriller about a lone man contending with extreme elements on the Vatnajökull icecap, but also a history of South Iceland, a sweeping discourse of volcanic eruption, of climate change and glacial melt, and of suicide in the country.
Bernharður has a serious accident on the glacier, and miraculously manages to crawl to the Skaftafell Visitor Centre where his life is saved by a veterinary surgeon, Dr Lassi. Lassi writes a report for a medical journal which Bernharður in turn uses to write his account, as a letter to the author, and this forms the backbone of the book.
Backbone only though, as there are plenty of digressions, at times so extensive that they ask the reader's patience. These vary from a detailed and at times gruesome list of suicides, the genealogical history of Icelandic sheep-stock, or the works of H.P. Lovecraft and their influence on the death metal music.
Sigurðsson's writing is a sublime and joyful musing on the nature of incomprehensible beauty and the devastating ways in which it can become destructive.
It may have a mystery at its heart, but it is also funny, and usually at its most bleak moments.
Here's a clip from when the narratorial baton is handed over to the surreal character, The Regular..
In its latter part it is a contemplation on climate change also, through glacial melt and related volcanic behaviour, with the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010 a warning of what may be to come..
It’s one part of Iceland I have not visited. But hope to soon. I’ve spent the last hour or so on Google Earth in the 3D mode. Its images are impressive, as with other mountain locations.
He's goes some way to answering it.
The protagonist, Bernharður, an Austrian of an Icelandic father and Swiss mother, ends up in Iceland because of a story he read in National Geographical when he was six years old. He is a toponymist, striving to discover how place names reflect their residents, as well as the rugged beauty of the region.
This is a unique book; a thriller about a lone man contending with extreme elements on the Vatnajökull icecap, but also a history of South Iceland, a sweeping discourse of volcanic eruption, of climate change and glacial melt, and of suicide in the country.
Bernharður has a serious accident on the glacier, and miraculously manages to crawl to the Skaftafell Visitor Centre where his life is saved by a veterinary surgeon, Dr Lassi. Lassi writes a report for a medical journal which Bernharður in turn uses to write his account, as a letter to the author, and this forms the backbone of the book.
Backbone only though, as there are plenty of digressions, at times so extensive that they ask the reader's patience. These vary from a detailed and at times gruesome list of suicides, the genealogical history of Icelandic sheep-stock, or the works of H.P. Lovecraft and their influence on the death metal music.
Sigurðsson's writing is a sublime and joyful musing on the nature of incomprehensible beauty and the devastating ways in which it can become destructive.
It may have a mystery at its heart, but it is also funny, and usually at its most bleak moments.
Here's a clip from when the narratorial baton is handed over to the surreal character, The Regular..
During the winter of 1982, high winds and violent storms and hurricanes traversed Öræfi; the harried inhabitants couldn’t remember comparable weather, The Regular said, there were many broken telephone poles and electricity poles, windows cracked and roofs blown off in most towns, vegetated lands were damaged by flung gravel, the weather was so bad the bus couldn’t get back or forth, its windows shattered in a hail of rocks and everyone had to stay put for the night in a violent storm of rocks and broken glass, sheltering under floor mats, there was a man taking a trip in a passenger car when a rock hail smashed all the windows in the car, the man was heading to a farm but his car was flung into the air and blown off the road, he said in an interview that he had been afraid he was going to be blown out to sea, thatbthe force of the wind had been so enormously weighty had beaten him down, he crawled along the road with a pocket flashlight in his jaw for many miles before he came, lacerated, to shelter in the bus that was on the road; that had saved his life.
That same winter Haley’s comet was seen in Öræfi, some cows and sheep went mad and had to be put down, dogs were inconsolable and bowled and whined at this comet in the star-studded sky as the glacier glowed and muttered.
In its latter part it is a contemplation on climate change also, through glacial melt and related volcanic behaviour, with the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010 a warning of what may be to come..
As everyone knows, Öræfajökull erupted 25 years ago, destroying the settlements all around the glacier and laying waste to the largest national park in Europe. Things are still being reconstructed today. Geologists believe it is comparable to the 1362 eruption, never have we witnessed such a great volcano erupting. The deaths of tens of millions of people around the world can be attributed to the eruption. Flights across Western countries were grounded for 18 months.
It’s one part of Iceland I have not visited. But hope to soon. I’ve spent the last hour or so on Google Earth in the 3D mode. Its images are impressive, as with other mountain locations.
February 25, 2024
I wanted to like Öræfi: The Wasteland by Ófeigur Sigurðsson, translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith, more than I did. The book begins when a teen stumbles into a tourist center with horrible wounds; a local vet stitches him up and then tries to piece together how he ended up in this famously bleak stretch of glacier, a story that involves the history of the land, those who explored it, and the tectonic activity that has more than once destroyed it.
This novel was a superb book about this area of Iceland, depicting the landscape of the glacier, the constant awareness of impending disaster and dogged determination to survive of the people who live there, the optimistic explorers who have visited and died, and the paired complete inhospitable nature of the land and its ability to start fresh and be born anew.
The book struggled in details that were too big to dismiss. The ending was nonsense. Dr Lassi could not have been more of a lesbian character written by a man, a brutish woman whose job is described as "killing and castrating" and who is always thinking about breasts. Everything about her character was already a poor choice, and in context of the ending, just becomes an absurd one. The random group of friends the teen acquires and their stories are a part of the novel just to be endured, and it never becomes more convincing (even as a joke) that this college kid is crossing a glacier with zero experience and basically no real preparation solely in order to write a linguistics thesis.
Ultimately, loved the tangible landscape and great world-building, but the narrative details can really make this a slog, and the ending doesn't make it worth it.
Content warnings for suicide, medical trauma, violence, body horror, child death, animal death.
This novel was a superb book about this area of Iceland, depicting the landscape of the glacier, the constant awareness of impending disaster and dogged determination to survive of the people who live there, the optimistic explorers who have visited and died, and the paired complete inhospitable nature of the land and its ability to start fresh and be born anew.
The book struggled in details that were too big to dismiss. The ending was nonsense. Dr Lassi could not have been more of a lesbian character written by a man, a brutish woman whose job is described as "killing and castrating" and who is always thinking about breasts. Everything about her character was already a poor choice, and in context of the ending, just becomes an absurd one. The random group of friends the teen acquires and their stories are a part of the novel just to be endured, and it never becomes more convincing (even as a joke) that this college kid is crossing a glacier with zero experience and basically no real preparation solely in order to write a linguistics thesis.
Ultimately, loved the tangible landscape and great world-building, but the narrative details can really make this a slog, and the ending doesn't make it worth it.
Content warnings for suicide, medical trauma, violence, body horror, child death, animal death.
March 6, 2017
Öræfi er nokkuð einstakt bókmenntaverk og er það eins gott því að ég er ekki viss um að ég myndi nenna að lesa margar bækur í þessum stíl. Bókin er skrifuð í stíl sem óhjákvæmilega gefur af sér kjánalegar, langdregnar og leiðinlegar einræður. Að því leyti finnst mér höfundi takast afar vel til. Þrátt fyrir að vera kjánaleg, langdregin og leiðinleg, þá var bókin hin prýðilegasta skemmtun.
March 27, 2018
The best book about Iceland and its landscape I have ever read.
May 16, 2024
! learned so much about toponymy geology geography folklore death metal symbolic art styles of storytelling Iceland in general I love this book
January 28, 2019
While the story was interesting, if not a bit simple (Austrian guy gets trapped in the Icelandic wastelands and people pick up the pieces of what happened), it did feel like it was rambling a bit. Maybe that's the style of the author/translation, but this kind of hurt your attention. Characters are rich and the constructed history was vivid, so once you get past the style of writing, things do pick up.
October 18, 2024
"A man is composed of everyone who's shared his path, I told myself, overwhelmed by my weighty trunk" (206)
I heard once from a bookseller in town that the best way to know a culture is to read their books, and this is one of the most true examples of that I can remember. As someone who's been to Iceland a couple times, I wish so much I'd read this before going, and it made me yearn to go back. Oraefi is a love letter to Southern Iceland, but I really struggled with it at times. I loved the characters so much, all of them so overflowing with life that you really knew them, until one of them would ramble for 20 pages about random stuff that I didn't care about and I'd just start skimming. At one point Sigurdsson lists every suicide from a 40 year period in Iceland, often in graphic, depressing detail, for like 15 pages! It got upsetting to read, so I skimmed til it was over. And there was a small payoff, then I moved on. Outside of maybe 2 or 3 times like that, I was starstruck. Also, I can't remember the last time I was so floored by an ending, and I won't say anymore without a spoiler warning, so you should go read the book!
SPOILERS FOLLOW:
I heard once from a bookseller in town that the best way to know a culture is to read their books, and this is one of the most true examples of that I can remember. As someone who's been to Iceland a couple times, I wish so much I'd read this before going, and it made me yearn to go back. Oraefi is a love letter to Southern Iceland, but I really struggled with it at times. I loved the characters so much, all of them so overflowing with life that you really knew them, until one of them would ramble for 20 pages about random stuff that I didn't care about and I'd just start skimming. At one point Sigurdsson lists every suicide from a 40 year period in Iceland, often in graphic, depressing detail, for like 15 pages! It got upsetting to read, so I skimmed til it was over. And there was a small payoff, then I moved on. Outside of maybe 2 or 3 times like that, I was starstruck. Also, I can't remember the last time I was so floored by an ending, and I won't say anymore without a spoiler warning, so you should go read the book!
SPOILERS FOLLOW:
February 5, 2015
Þessa bók fílaði ég alveg í tætlur - en hún er örggulega ekki fyrir alla. Mér fannst hún ferlega fyndin á köflum - ég gat alveg hlegið upphátt öðru hvoru, þessi kaldhæðna íslenska fyndni á vel við mig. Síðan er fullt af beittri ádeilu - á ferðamannaiðnaðinn, skógrækt, bændur, ríkið, forsjárhyggju, hetjudýrkun Íslendinga, hnattvæðingu, bara hvað sem er. Það er líka nóg af sagnfræðilegaum fróðleik - kannski ekki öllum réttum en það er aukatriði, maður verður að muna að þetta er skáldsaga. Og endirinn er frábær, þá fær maður eins og blauta tusku í andlitið einmitt að þetta er skáldsaga.
January 16, 2019
Although it was absolutely beautiful at times, the stream of consciousness writing just wasn't for me. It made reading the book a struggle, one that I couldn't fully appreciate. The long sidetracks sometimes bored me and it frustrated me at times that it was difficult to keep track of the narrator structure, for example: 'x happened, said person A, reported person B, wrote person C me in their letter, as I am telling you now'.
February 24, 2016
Þessi bók var mikil vonbrigði. Það mætti breyta titlinum, sem gæti þá t.d. verið: "Öræfi héraðslýsing - mannlíf, lífshættir og sagnir úr Öræfum frá landnámi til nútíma." Höfundur hefur verið ósköp duglegur að gúggla og afla heimilda um Öræfasveitina og það koma skemmtilegir sprettir inn á milli en þetta er klætt í "söguþráð" sem er mjög skrítinn og jafnvel kjánalegur á köflum.
January 18, 2015
Komst ekki í gegnum þessa bók - sama hvað ég reyndi - fann ekki línuna í henni :( það er eiginlega fúlt - því að textinn aftan á kápunni gaf manni væntingar um skemmtilegra/betra efni ....
February 1, 2015
Ein undarlegasta bók sem ég hef lesið.
February 10, 2015
Hress stíll en endist ekki vel, leiðinlegur til lengdar.
February 2, 2016
Óhamið hugmyndaflug, bullandi mælska, tengingar í allar áttir, óreiða. Sumum finnst það frábært. Ég er ekki aðdáandi.
March 11, 2021
Sometimes you can just tell, upon finishing a book, that it is a work of genius. Mind you, that's not the same thing as enjoying the book, and this one is a particularly tough nut to crack. It is simply difficult to think of another book which so well encapsulates a country, possessing the degree of depth and chaotic enthusiasm which characterizes Sigurðsson's writing. I'll give it three stars for enjoyment and five for quality--evening out to four stars.
Öræfi is no universal, character-driven story that is easy to understand. Rather, it is a novel of ideas, so many ideas it is practically bursting at the seams. The most obvious and pervasive theme is the conflict between humanity and nature. Iceland, from its name to its frozen landscape, seems doomed to this conflict, with its many centuries of inhabitants' attempts to alter, or conquer, the landscape. If you were hoping to visit Öræfi, you will likely have second thoughts as Sigurðsson highlights the destructive influence tourists have had on the region. Of course, tourists are only one part of the problem; native Icelanders, including the government, have been mucking up the region for centuries, mainly with agriculture and sheep. But nature has its way of fighting back. It often involves volcanoes.
If you do not immediately cotton onto this central theme, you can be forgiven, because Sigurðsson does not exactly present it in simple, concise language. This is a maximalist stream-of-consciousness novels marked by dense paragraphs, sentences going on pages and pages, and lengthy digressions into all sorts of topics. That, in fact, is why I picked it up; stream-of-consciousness is one of my favorite styles. I do have a pet peeve in stream-of-consciousness, however, and that's when the author rattles off facts for pages in a way reminiscent of an encyclopedia. Sigurðsson is guilty of that a few times in this novel, but it does not bother me as much as usual, because he does such a good job of tying everything into the novel's central themes. This is a novel of ideas, after all, including very abstract ones, and by the time the digression is over, in a roundabout way, you can see how he connects death metal to Iceland.
Though the novel has no conventional plot, it is indeed building toward something (perhaps a couple of things), and there is a certain satisfaction to seeing the wave of ideas hit their peak. I do not recommend this for the faint of heart, but for those interested in postmodern maximalist novels, particularly those about nature, history, and folklore, this is well worth reading. I don't regret reading it, am quite glad I did, in fact, but I'll admit there were a couple times while I was reading it I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
Öræfi is no universal, character-driven story that is easy to understand. Rather, it is a novel of ideas, so many ideas it is practically bursting at the seams. The most obvious and pervasive theme is the conflict between humanity and nature. Iceland, from its name to its frozen landscape, seems doomed to this conflict, with its many centuries of inhabitants' attempts to alter, or conquer, the landscape. If you were hoping to visit Öræfi, you will likely have second thoughts as Sigurðsson highlights the destructive influence tourists have had on the region. Of course, tourists are only one part of the problem; native Icelanders, including the government, have been mucking up the region for centuries, mainly with agriculture and sheep. But nature has its way of fighting back. It often involves volcanoes.
If you do not immediately cotton onto this central theme, you can be forgiven, because Sigurðsson does not exactly present it in simple, concise language. This is a maximalist stream-of-consciousness novels marked by dense paragraphs, sentences going on pages and pages, and lengthy digressions into all sorts of topics. That, in fact, is why I picked it up; stream-of-consciousness is one of my favorite styles. I do have a pet peeve in stream-of-consciousness, however, and that's when the author rattles off facts for pages in a way reminiscent of an encyclopedia. Sigurðsson is guilty of that a few times in this novel, but it does not bother me as much as usual, because he does such a good job of tying everything into the novel's central themes. This is a novel of ideas, after all, including very abstract ones, and by the time the digression is over, in a roundabout way, you can see how he connects death metal to Iceland.
Though the novel has no conventional plot, it is indeed building toward something (perhaps a couple of things), and there is a certain satisfaction to seeing the wave of ideas hit their peak. I do not recommend this for the faint of heart, but for those interested in postmodern maximalist novels, particularly those about nature, history, and folklore, this is well worth reading. I don't regret reading it, am quite glad I did, in fact, but I'll admit there were a couple times while I was reading it I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
January 16, 2025
I chose Iceland as my first challenge for StoryGraph Reads the World 2025 because it’s January and, honestly, I craved the atmosphere of True Detective Night Country (filmed in Iceland, set in Alaska), however weird to admit. My expectations were far off, though the book is dark (think 15 pages describing suicides through the late 1700s dark). The novel is a meandering, steam-of-consciousness, long-winded account with layers of narration (he said, she interpreted, she wrote, I read). I found it hard to focus on the details, like I was swimming through the story. I already feel like the book resonates with me more now that I’ve finished it than while I was reading it. I had no idea if my confusion stemmed from my lack of familiarity with Iceland and its culture or if my brain was just resistant to being swept away by the tide of words. The author’s and translator’s notes gave me more insight and made the hazy atmosphere of the tale seem fitting and more successful in its aim than it first appeared. I may be off, but I can now appreciate how the unique people Bernhardur met on his journey accentuated the importance of such a trip to his academic and personal lives. It’s equally valid for them only to be quirky characters with lots of random anecdotes, I guess. I got along best with reflections on the land, the origin of words and place names, the effects of tourism, and thoughts on poetry, nature, and beauty.
June 5, 2024
Where to start.
This was unlike any book I’ve ever read. I found it much like the wasteland of Öraefi—whimsically charming, entirely true to self, and nearly impassable.
The book in and of itself was an educational masterpiece. It was quintessentially Icelandic, and the little tidbits of culture and history and toponymy were all fascinating, when I took the time to pace myself and pay attention.
The English major in me wanted to love the stream-of-consciousness style of writing, and constant shifts of perspective, and all of the other amazing idiosyncrasies contained within. And I loved them in moments, but on the whole, I found them overwhelming to the point of lessening my enjoyment of the material. There was something of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” about it—if you can survive the endless taxonomy, you’ll find value. In this case, you have to toil through 2-page sentences and endless rambles by various characters, all of which have value buried in them, but you have to go looking.
If you’ve got the time on your hands and the mental fortitude, you’ll love this book. I frequently have neither, and so struggled. But it’s an amazing narrative and an unbelievable project, and I’m happy I read it above all.
This was unlike any book I’ve ever read. I found it much like the wasteland of Öraefi—whimsically charming, entirely true to self, and nearly impassable.
The book in and of itself was an educational masterpiece. It was quintessentially Icelandic, and the little tidbits of culture and history and toponymy were all fascinating, when I took the time to pace myself and pay attention.
The English major in me wanted to love the stream-of-consciousness style of writing, and constant shifts of perspective, and all of the other amazing idiosyncrasies contained within. And I loved them in moments, but on the whole, I found them overwhelming to the point of lessening my enjoyment of the material. There was something of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” about it—if you can survive the endless taxonomy, you’ll find value. In this case, you have to toil through 2-page sentences and endless rambles by various characters, all of which have value buried in them, but you have to go looking.
If you’ve got the time on your hands and the mental fortitude, you’ll love this book. I frequently have neither, and so struggled. But it’s an amazing narrative and an unbelievable project, and I’m happy I read it above all.
November 19, 2018
This book is amazing and impossible to describe. It's a weird, funny, sad, beautiful manuscript that includes killer sheep, dismemberment, long treatises on death metal, historical myths and legends, and lots of information about Icelandic glaciers and floods and volcanic eruptions. It's a frame within a frame within a frame within a frame, a retelling of a letter about a book written by a veterinarian transcribing the words of a translator who is translating the words of the man writing the letter and this strange and circular eddy of language makes it hard to keep your head above water. It's clawing back against humanity's drive to normalize and standardize, it's an ode to wild, untamed nature. It's about the naming of things, about what names give and what names cost.
"...cultivation is anti-nature, anti-God, all this reforestation and sheep farming and horticulture, first and foremost I'm opposed to all cultivation... I am all in with God and nature, humans, animals, plants and rocks and glaciers and the wind; I'm all for the wasteland."
"...cultivation is anti-nature, anti-God, all this reforestation and sheep farming and horticulture, first and foremost I'm opposed to all cultivation... I am all in with God and nature, humans, animals, plants and rocks and glaciers and the wind; I'm all for the wasteland."
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