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Letters from Iceland
This highly amusing and unorthodox travel book resulted from a light-hearted summer journey by the young poets Auden and MacNiece in 1936. Their letters home, in verse and prose, are full of private jokes and irreverent comments about people, politics, literature and ideas. "Letters from Iceland" is one of the most entertaining books in modern literature; from Auden's 'Letter to Lord Byron' and MacNiece's 'Eclogue', to the mischief and fun of their joint 'Last Will and Testament', the book is impossible to resist- a thirties classic.
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First published January 1, 1937
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About the author
W.H. Auden
620 books1,069 followersPoems, published in such collections as
Look, Stranger!
(1936) and
The Shield of Achilles
(1955), established importance of British-American writer and critic Wystan Hugh Auden in 20th-century literature.
In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.
He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.
Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.
People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.
From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.
Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.
The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.
Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.
Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."
He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.
After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t
In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.
He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.
Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.
People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.
From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.
Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.
The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.
Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.
Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."
He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.
After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
January 3, 2020
I know top-hats and frock coats don't make people look their best, but on appearance alone I wouldn't have trusted one of them with the spoons.
Letters from Iceland is a rum sort of romp, a polyvocal book which ostensibly is about, well, going to Iceland, but the book is more reflective of the anxiety of going to a strange place with bizarre traditions and knowing that in a generation or two there will be a Costco and a Starbucks. Auden conceived of the idea while there Auden sort of bracketed the enterprise in a writing in a verse a series of letters to Lord Byron. The observations of the volcanoes and strange customs of the island nation recall the very best of Montesquieu and his Persian Letters. While hilarious at times, Auden is most revealing about his sensitivity, his curiosity and trepidation that Progress may be afoot but remains oblivious to the costs of such.
Letters from Iceland is a rum sort of romp, a polyvocal book which ostensibly is about, well, going to Iceland, but the book is more reflective of the anxiety of going to a strange place with bizarre traditions and knowing that in a generation or two there will be a Costco and a Starbucks. Auden conceived of the idea while there Auden sort of bracketed the enterprise in a writing in a verse a series of letters to Lord Byron. The observations of the volcanoes and strange customs of the island nation recall the very best of Montesquieu and his Persian Letters. While hilarious at times, Auden is most revealing about his sensitivity, his curiosity and trepidation that Progress may be afoot but remains oblivious to the costs of such.
January 5, 2026
"If you have no particular intellectual interests or ambitions and are content with the company of your family and friends, then life on Iceland must be very pleasant, because the inhabitants are friendly, tolerant and sane".
August 21, 2014
I thought Hetty's letters to Nancy were very funny.
Bits I liked:
"Every exciting letter has enclosures,"
"The old woman confessing: 'He that I loved the
Best, to him I was the worst.'"
"The songs of jazz have told us of a moon country
And we like to dream of a heat which is never sultry,
Melons to eat, champagne to drink, and a lazy
Music hour by hour depetalling the daisy."
"The Borg is called a first-class hotel but is not the kind of thing you like if you like that kind of thing: still it is the only place where you can get a drink."
"There is a phrase-book for those who find that kind of thing any use, and for the conscientious there is Zoega's English-Icelandic Dictionary (expensive and full of non-existent English words)"
"In the larger hotels in Reykjavik you will of course get ordinary European food, but in the farms you will only get what there is, which is on the whole rather peculiar."
"Soups: Many of these are sweet and very unfortunate. I remember three with particular horror, one of sweet milk and hard macaroni, one tasting of hot marzipan, and one of scented hair oil."
"Meat: This is practically confined to mutton in various forms. The Danes have influenced Icelandic cooking, and to no advantage. Meat is liable to be served up in glutinous and half-cold lumps, covered with tasteless gravy. At the poorer farms you will only get Hangikyrl, i.e. smoked mutton. This is comparatively harmless when cold as it only tastes like soot, but it would take a very hungry man indeed to eat it hot."
"beware of the browned potatoes, as they are coated in sugar, another Danish barbarism."
"Those who like tea or cocoa should bring it with them and supervise the making of it themselves."
"The King of Denmark has paid a visit and I watched him come out of the prime minister's house accompanied by distinguished citizens. I know top-hats and frock coats don't make people look their best, but on appearance alone I wouldn't have trusted one of them with the spoons."
"How embarrassing it is to get into an already crowded bus when the passengers have got to know each other. We felt like the Germans invading Belgium."
"and we sat and listened to the wireless ... Someone apparently has tried to assessinate King Edward VIII. Nobody looked very interested."
"and I had run out of cigarettes so just sulked into my waistcoat."
Hetty to Nancy:
"I couldn't see that it was very funny and Maisie is supposed to be witty, but then it is different in London, where people have always been drinking sherry before you say anyhing to them."
"Anyhow it is a very fine waterfall as waterfalls go but, as Maisie says, they don't go far."
One letter opens: "Darling, darling, DARLING,"
"Well, on and on we rode through the stinging rain; it was so nasty it was really rather enjoyable. And we all felt rather heroic, I think."
"The Icelanders are rather proud of it as a show-piece of scenery and no doubt on a clear day it may be quite beautiful if one drives through it quickly in a car."
"We came across the ancient wreck of a very primitive touring car - more desolate than the bones of a camel in a film about the foreign legion."
"but the really bad feature of the day was that the guides produced another cave (they ought to be psycho-analysed)."
September 22, 2007
The premise: on the eve of WWII, the young WH Auden and one of his poet friends spend an idyllic summer traveling around Iceland and sending witty letters and poems home.
The product isn't as interesting as the premise sounds (partly due to my extremely low tolerance for so-called "funny" poetry, I'm sure). Auden's letters, however, made the read worthwhile and made me want to start up a correspondence (ideally multiple). It's hard to buy a copy in print in the US, but if you get it at the library I would flip past the verse to the travelwriting sections. Letters from Iceland offers tourism of the unknown, but also tourism of the past--a trip through a western Europe that doesn't exist anymore.
Selected excerpt: "I wish I could describe things well, for a whale is the most beautiful animal I have ever seen. It combines the fascination of something alive, enormous, and gentle, with the functional beauties of modern machinery. A seventy-ton one was lying on the slip-way like a large and very dignified duchess being got ready for the ball by beetles. To see it torn to pieces with steam winches and cranes is enough to make one a vegetarian for life.
In the lounge the wireless was playing 'I want to be bad' and 'Eat an apple every day.' Downstairs the steward's canary chirped incessantly. The sun was out; in the bay, surrounded by buoys and gulls, were the semi-submerged bodies of five dead whales: and down the slip-way ran a constant stream of blood, staining the water a deep red for a distance of fifty yards. Someone whistled a tune. A bell suddeny clanged and everyone stuck their spades in the carcase and went off for lunch. The body remained alone in the sun, the flesh still steaming a little. It gave one an extraordinary vision of the cold controlled ferocity of the human species" (p 147-8).
The product isn't as interesting as the premise sounds (partly due to my extremely low tolerance for so-called "funny" poetry, I'm sure). Auden's letters, however, made the read worthwhile and made me want to start up a correspondence (ideally multiple). It's hard to buy a copy in print in the US, but if you get it at the library I would flip past the verse to the travelwriting sections. Letters from Iceland offers tourism of the unknown, but also tourism of the past--a trip through a western Europe that doesn't exist anymore.
Selected excerpt: "I wish I could describe things well, for a whale is the most beautiful animal I have ever seen. It combines the fascination of something alive, enormous, and gentle, with the functional beauties of modern machinery. A seventy-ton one was lying on the slip-way like a large and very dignified duchess being got ready for the ball by beetles. To see it torn to pieces with steam winches and cranes is enough to make one a vegetarian for life.
In the lounge the wireless was playing 'I want to be bad' and 'Eat an apple every day.' Downstairs the steward's canary chirped incessantly. The sun was out; in the bay, surrounded by buoys and gulls, were the semi-submerged bodies of five dead whales: and down the slip-way ran a constant stream of blood, staining the water a deep red for a distance of fifty yards. Someone whistled a tune. A bell suddeny clanged and everyone stuck their spades in the carcase and went off for lunch. The body remained alone in the sun, the flesh still steaming a little. It gave one an extraordinary vision of the cold controlled ferocity of the human species" (p 147-8).
December 26, 2024
From a hidden back corner of beloved store,
I plucked this book that had caught my eye.
A thin coat of dust the cover wore
Yet the words within were those of spry
Youths that traveled lands where one day I
May travel, though only spatially;
With them I also voyaged temporally.
For these words reached out across the ages,
Nearly one hundred years since pen
Scrawled the thoughts of these sages;
I jest, these fellows MacNeice and Auden
Appear somewhat beyond their ken
But that makes the writing more relatable
If their strong opinions a bit questionable.
In short pieces, this work is best ingested
A section, a verse, a passage at a time,
Lest the mind feel beaten and bested
By page after page after page of rhyme
Or satiric prose, best given time.
Some pages lively, others dull,
But I found plenty upon which to mull.
I plucked this book that had caught my eye.
A thin coat of dust the cover wore
Yet the words within were those of spry
Youths that traveled lands where one day I
May travel, though only spatially;
With them I also voyaged temporally.
For these words reached out across the ages,
Nearly one hundred years since pen
Scrawled the thoughts of these sages;
I jest, these fellows MacNeice and Auden
Appear somewhat beyond their ken
But that makes the writing more relatable
If their strong opinions a bit questionable.
In short pieces, this work is best ingested
A section, a verse, a passage at a time,
Lest the mind feel beaten and bested
By page after page after page of rhyme
Or satiric prose, best given time.
Some pages lively, others dull,
But I found plenty upon which to mull.
September 8, 2017
Five stars for the poetry.
Seven stars for 'Last will and testament'.
Two stars for the letters of Hetty to Nancy, which I sadly could not understand nor appreciate.
Sixteen stars for Iceland.
Seven stars for 'Last will and testament'.
Two stars for the letters of Hetty to Nancy, which I sadly could not understand nor appreciate.
Sixteen stars for Iceland.
October 15, 2017
Quietly glorious. I've been looking for a way to anchor Auden; this was perfect.
July 18, 2020
I am of several minds about this book. I have been carrying it around for more than 50 years. I have a Random House hardcover that I remember buying in the old Kroch's and Brentano's in the Chicago Loop. Even though I was young and finding poetry in whatever haphazard way I could, I must have been grabbed by the famous Auden poems -- "Musee des Beaux Arts" and the elegy for Yeats -- so thought this book would help. I never read it then, and can see now that I couldn't have read it. I had no context for it at all then.
My first thought, I think the only real interest it can have now is in its picture of the young-ish W.H.Auden, closely before the second World War, before he moved to the States and before he wrote his major poems. It is certainly not a travel book that we could trust now, and the poetry in it is not the best example of either poet's work (although I will say more on "Letter to Byron.").
It is also very interesting to see that a book like this could be published, even commercially (!), at that time. I can't imagine anyone now publishing a mix of poetry, smart-ass commentary on another culture written in quick "letters," and maybe a bit of journal entry. Not even the most adventurous small press. Yeah, Auden was already a presence, but he wasn't THAT much of a presence.
The form and narrative of the long "Letter to Lord Byron," though, is pretty interesting. Auden has chosen a 7 line stanza rather than the Byronic Ottava rima or the Spenserian stanza of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Auden's 7 line stanza allows him to be playful (ABABBCC) and it allows him to stick lots of things in, both about the trip to Iceland and general thoughts. Mostly the tone is the same as the rest of the book -- very British upper crusty, superior condescension, even when the writers are making fun of themselves.
But in the third section of the long poem, there are a couple of places where Auden is wonderful on his own process, his own aesthetics. "To me Art's subject is the human clay,/And landscape but a background to the torso." And that's why the natural world is so sketchy in Auden. He didn't care, and he could barely see the nonhuman world he passed through. Iceland, at least in this book, would have been better with actual descriptions of things.
Then right after that quote is another one that I've always misquoted:
Art, if it doesn't start there, at least ends,
Whether aesthetics like the thought or not,
In an attempt to entertain our friends.
That is worth remembering, and defending.
And here's some prose from one of Auden's letters to his wife, Erika Mann (who he married to help her with visa so she could get out of German). This does much to explain this odd book"
"In the bus today I had a bright idea about this travel book. I brought a Byron with me to Iceland, and I suddenly thought I might write him a chatty letter in light verse about anything I could think of, Europe, literature, myself. He's the right person I think, because he was a townee, a European, and disliked Wordsworth and that kind of approach to nature, and I find that very sympathetic."
Of course, I fundamentally disagree with him, but I admit that I like the ease with which he says it!
My first thought, I think the only real interest it can have now is in its picture of the young-ish W.H.Auden, closely before the second World War, before he moved to the States and before he wrote his major poems. It is certainly not a travel book that we could trust now, and the poetry in it is not the best example of either poet's work (although I will say more on "Letter to Byron.").
It is also very interesting to see that a book like this could be published, even commercially (!), at that time. I can't imagine anyone now publishing a mix of poetry, smart-ass commentary on another culture written in quick "letters," and maybe a bit of journal entry. Not even the most adventurous small press. Yeah, Auden was already a presence, but he wasn't THAT much of a presence.
The form and narrative of the long "Letter to Lord Byron," though, is pretty interesting. Auden has chosen a 7 line stanza rather than the Byronic Ottava rima or the Spenserian stanza of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Auden's 7 line stanza allows him to be playful (ABABBCC) and it allows him to stick lots of things in, both about the trip to Iceland and general thoughts. Mostly the tone is the same as the rest of the book -- very British upper crusty, superior condescension, even when the writers are making fun of themselves.
But in the third section of the long poem, there are a couple of places where Auden is wonderful on his own process, his own aesthetics. "To me Art's subject is the human clay,/And landscape but a background to the torso." And that's why the natural world is so sketchy in Auden. He didn't care, and he could barely see the nonhuman world he passed through. Iceland, at least in this book, would have been better with actual descriptions of things.
Then right after that quote is another one that I've always misquoted:
Art, if it doesn't start there, at least ends,
Whether aesthetics like the thought or not,
In an attempt to entertain our friends.
That is worth remembering, and defending.
And here's some prose from one of Auden's letters to his wife, Erika Mann (who he married to help her with visa so she could get out of German). This does much to explain this odd book"
"In the bus today I had a bright idea about this travel book. I brought a Byron with me to Iceland, and I suddenly thought I might write him a chatty letter in light verse about anything I could think of, Europe, literature, myself. He's the right person I think, because he was a townee, a European, and disliked Wordsworth and that kind of approach to nature, and I find that very sympathetic."
Of course, I fundamentally disagree with him, but I admit that I like the ease with which he says it!
January 13, 2010
A lovely little travel narrative, this isn't your usual guidebook. Letters from Iceland is filled with poetry and notes home. Auden's voice, especially, is charming, though MacNeice's final poem is wonderful. While I read this in preparation for a trip to Iceland, it's actually a good read for any interested in seeing Europe (and England) at a very particular moment between wars, with colonialism not quite over and the depression hitting the world hard. Auden and MacNeice, two intellectuals, have an interesting perspective on this, distanced as they are both physically and mentally from the struggle. Auden's preface, written thirty years after the book's publication, is particularly poignant, and the book overall is charming and also deeply telling.
August 29, 2015
Auden in IJsland
Auden reisde in 1936 door IJsland met de schrijver Louis MacNeice. Hij schreef over deze reis het werk 'Brieven uit IJsland'. Het is een briljante en eigenzinnige collage van brieven, gedichten (aan Byron), reisimpressies, literaire beschouwingen en anekdotes. Een aanrader voor degene die a. zonder dit boek te kennen naar IJsland is geweest b. er ooit naar toe wil gaan of c. liever Laxness leest en thuisblijft.
Auden reisde in 1936 door IJsland met de schrijver Louis MacNeice. Hij schreef over deze reis het werk 'Brieven uit IJsland'. Het is een briljante en eigenzinnige collage van brieven, gedichten (aan Byron), reisimpressies, literaire beschouwingen en anekdotes. Een aanrader voor degene die a. zonder dit boek te kennen naar IJsland is geweest b. er ooit naar toe wil gaan of c. liever Laxness leest en thuisblijft.
November 21, 2012
In Auden's words,
I like to walk, but not to walk too far.
I also like green plains where cattle are,
And trees and rivers, and shall always quarrel
With those who think that rivers are immoral.
I like to walk, but not to walk too far.
I also like green plains where cattle are,
And trees and rivers, and shall always quarrel
With those who think that rivers are immoral.
November 7, 2007
Beautiful, fresh and funny.
December 31, 2020
A weird book, it's not very much about Iceland, but interestingly nonetheless.
April 19, 2022
What an interesting read. I'm surprised at myself for finishing, but I also genuinely enjoyed. I came across this book as one on a list of Patti Smith's favorite reads. It is mostly interesting for its form, a travelogue by several authors through Iceland in the late 1930s, largely written in poetic verse.
I'm also titillated by the way my own literary interests have converged here. Auden writes in one of his letters, documented herein, that he has this silly idea to write his travels as Letters to Lord Byron (the late poet) because he has this Byron book with him traveling through Iceland. And I'm, meanwhile in a way, also reading Disgrace wherein the disgraced professor studies and considers writing new work on Byron and Wordsworth.
Some of the poetry is dense, but some is quite astute and self-aware, and some of the letters are quite humorous. I can particularly imagine Patti Smith's draw to the letter from Hetty to Nancy. Not really sure who Hetty is, but she has a good-sized section in the book for this letter on her own girls trek on guided horses through Iceland with a friend Maisie and some college girls.
Hetty's letter is most fun when it feels contemporary, she offers Freudian critique like it's 2020. "Maisie says it is a bad thing in Freud that he always suggests that neurosis is something to be got rid of. On the contrary, says M., all the progress in this world is due to neurosis. If Sylvia Pankhurst had been analysed in her 'teens, we shouldn't have women's suffrage. Let us have as much neurosis as we can stand." Hetty writes with humor, with clarity, and without edits. At one point she drops a sentence and doesn't scratch anything out but continues to her wit.
Nazis are mentioned several times. There presence is curious, distanced perhaps as the writers feel they should be. But Nazi's are nevertheless traveling around Iceland at the same time as the authors. Maybe the Nazi presence in these otherwise light travel narratives is upsetting because they obviously predate WW2, the Blitz, known racial cleansing, etc., and ominously this history of white nationalism is repeating. How might I report on seeing MAGA in some Icelandic bar? Only at the very end of the book do the authors address their epoch calling, in verse, for the end of Hitler's rule and then more generally offering a message of hope for good people to "act, forgive, and bless."
The last poem, a "Last will and testament" is a kind of thank you to all those who have influenced, aggravated, or shared love with the authors. I think it must have been more humorous for those of the times than for me since I'm at a loss when it comes to 30s references, but I still appreciate the effort. And the idea that you may itemize a mouse for a friend's cat or "a terrible double entendre" to a famous critic.
I'm also titillated by the way my own literary interests have converged here. Auden writes in one of his letters, documented herein, that he has this silly idea to write his travels as Letters to Lord Byron (the late poet) because he has this Byron book with him traveling through Iceland. And I'm, meanwhile in a way, also reading Disgrace wherein the disgraced professor studies and considers writing new work on Byron and Wordsworth.
Some of the poetry is dense, but some is quite astute and self-aware, and some of the letters are quite humorous. I can particularly imagine Patti Smith's draw to the letter from Hetty to Nancy. Not really sure who Hetty is, but she has a good-sized section in the book for this letter on her own girls trek on guided horses through Iceland with a friend Maisie and some college girls.
Hetty's letter is most fun when it feels contemporary, she offers Freudian critique like it's 2020. "Maisie says it is a bad thing in Freud that he always suggests that neurosis is something to be got rid of. On the contrary, says M., all the progress in this world is due to neurosis. If Sylvia Pankhurst had been analysed in her 'teens, we shouldn't have women's suffrage. Let us have as much neurosis as we can stand." Hetty writes with humor, with clarity, and without edits. At one point she drops a sentence and doesn't scratch anything out but continues to her wit.
Nazis are mentioned several times. There presence is curious, distanced perhaps as the writers feel they should be. But Nazi's are nevertheless traveling around Iceland at the same time as the authors. Maybe the Nazi presence in these otherwise light travel narratives is upsetting because they obviously predate WW2, the Blitz, known racial cleansing, etc., and ominously this history of white nationalism is repeating. How might I report on seeing MAGA in some Icelandic bar? Only at the very end of the book do the authors address their epoch calling, in verse, for the end of Hitler's rule and then more generally offering a message of hope for good people to "act, forgive, and bless."
The last poem, a "Last will and testament" is a kind of thank you to all those who have influenced, aggravated, or shared love with the authors. I think it must have been more humorous for those of the times than for me since I'm at a loss when it comes to 30s references, but I still appreciate the effort. And the idea that you may itemize a mouse for a friend's cat or "a terrible double entendre" to a famous critic.
June 7, 2018
I latched once again onto Auden after reading this extraordinary essay by Hannah Arendt, especially her assertion, "There was nothing more admirable in Auden than his complete sanity and his firm belief in sanity; in his eyes all kinds of madness were lack of discipline—“Naughty, naughty,” as he used to say. The main thing was to have no illusions and to accept no thoughts—no theoretical systems—that would blind you to reality." I went looking for Journey to a War but was told at a bookstore it was out of print in its standalone edition; I picked up instead this slim travel volume, which proclaims itself in its back copy to be "a thirties classic."
It is a fantastic jumble of sly wit and melancholic observations, from the silly-fantastic "Hetty to Nancy" to the powerful "Last Will and Testament." The latter swings from gossipy jokes on the contemporary great and good, in the vein of The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-39, to MacNeice's words to his sister, infant son, and ex-wife:
"Item, to my sister Elizabeth what she lacks-
The courage to gamble on the doubtful odds
And in the end a retreat among Irish lakes
And farmyard smells and the prism of the Irish air;
Item, to Dan my son whenever he wakes
To the consciousness of what his limits are
I leave the ingenuity to transmute
His limits into roads and travel far;
Lastly to Mary living in a remote
Country I leave whatever she would remember
Of hers and mine before she took that boat,
Such memories not being necessarily lumber
And may no chance, unless she wills, delete them
And may her hours be gold and without number."
Or try the joint offering that closes the poem, from both Auden and MacNeice:
"And to the good who know how wide the gulf, how deep
Between Ideal and Real, who being good have felt
The final temptation to withdraw, sit down and weep,
We pray the power to take upon themselves the guilt
Of human action, though still as ready to confess
The imperfection of what can and must be built,
The wish and power to act, forgive, and bless."
Ranging from the intimate, sad, and funny to the abstract and great, the book proves the point "Holidays should be like this, Free from over-emphasis, Time for soul to stretch and spit/Before the world comes back on it."
It is a fantastic jumble of sly wit and melancholic observations, from the silly-fantastic "Hetty to Nancy" to the powerful "Last Will and Testament." The latter swings from gossipy jokes on the contemporary great and good, in the vein of The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-39, to MacNeice's words to his sister, infant son, and ex-wife:
"Item, to my sister Elizabeth what she lacks-
The courage to gamble on the doubtful odds
And in the end a retreat among Irish lakes
And farmyard smells and the prism of the Irish air;
Item, to Dan my son whenever he wakes
To the consciousness of what his limits are
I leave the ingenuity to transmute
His limits into roads and travel far;
Lastly to Mary living in a remote
Country I leave whatever she would remember
Of hers and mine before she took that boat,
Such memories not being necessarily lumber
And may no chance, unless she wills, delete them
And may her hours be gold and without number."
Or try the joint offering that closes the poem, from both Auden and MacNeice:
"And to the good who know how wide the gulf, how deep
Between Ideal and Real, who being good have felt
The final temptation to withdraw, sit down and weep,
We pray the power to take upon themselves the guilt
Of human action, though still as ready to confess
The imperfection of what can and must be built,
The wish and power to act, forgive, and bless."
Ranging from the intimate, sad, and funny to the abstract and great, the book proves the point "Holidays should be like this, Free from over-emphasis, Time for soul to stretch and spit/Before the world comes back on it."
March 22, 2025
I think there are a few traps waiting for anybody writing about a voyage into the unknown. One is the writer confusing a chance encounter or a single moment for the key to the whole culture or place. Another is forgetting the whole load of cultural baggage and individual bias that the traveller carries with them.
But what makes Letters from Iceland one of the best travel books I’ve ever read is it makes no pretence to objectivity (like a historian or reporter) and the writers wear their self-interest, their prejudice and their ignorance firmly pinned to their sleeves. (Ok, and it’s also wildly inventive.)
The book contains: poems written in comic verse to the long-dead Lord Byron, some very personal, some about the grim prospects for Europe in 1935 (the Spanish Civil War had just started); letters to friends that detail curious foods, ponies, whale dismemberment, interminable geological features, rain and evening games of rummy; a long and absolutely hilarious letter written by a fictitious woman scout leader about a trip that directly parallels the 2 men’s holiday, but is much, much funnier; some re-told folktales and preposterous historical anecdotes; a long and very funny catalog of quotations by previous travel writers (including Richard Burton) about Iceland which, if anything, tell you more about the arrogance, ignorance and self-interest of those travellers themselves than about the Icelanders themselves.
There is a tradition of curmudgeonly travel writing which this book fits into, but it’s more than that, because it’s so personal and so honest about being absolutely unfit for the task you might expect of it. The best part for me was that from this miscellany Iceland escapes with its mystery intact ― it’s neither “unveiled” or “explained” and so if you’ve always been curious you’ll be curious still. By the end of the book you won’t feel much more enlightened about the place than when you started, but you’ll sure have enjoyed the trip.
But what makes Letters from Iceland one of the best travel books I’ve ever read is it makes no pretence to objectivity (like a historian or reporter) and the writers wear their self-interest, their prejudice and their ignorance firmly pinned to their sleeves. (Ok, and it’s also wildly inventive.)
The book contains: poems written in comic verse to the long-dead Lord Byron, some very personal, some about the grim prospects for Europe in 1935 (the Spanish Civil War had just started); letters to friends that detail curious foods, ponies, whale dismemberment, interminable geological features, rain and evening games of rummy; a long and absolutely hilarious letter written by a fictitious woman scout leader about a trip that directly parallels the 2 men’s holiday, but is much, much funnier; some re-told folktales and preposterous historical anecdotes; a long and very funny catalog of quotations by previous travel writers (including Richard Burton) about Iceland which, if anything, tell you more about the arrogance, ignorance and self-interest of those travellers themselves than about the Icelanders themselves.
There is a tradition of curmudgeonly travel writing which this book fits into, but it’s more than that, because it’s so personal and so honest about being absolutely unfit for the task you might expect of it. The best part for me was that from this miscellany Iceland escapes with its mystery intact ― it’s neither “unveiled” or “explained” and so if you’ve always been curious you’ll be curious still. By the end of the book you won’t feel much more enlightened about the place than when you started, but you’ll sure have enjoyed the trip.
September 30, 2020
What a strange and weird travel book about Auden and MacNeice’s three month’s of travel around Iceland, mainly by bus and pony, in 1936; part letters home, part poetry, a little fact and quotes from earlier writers about Iceland, and a diary section written by a cod spinster.
As Auden says in his first “Letter to Lord Byron”:
Every exciting letter has enclosures,
And so shall this - a bunch of photographs,
Some out of focus, some with wrong exposures,
Press cuttings, gossip, maps, statistics, graphs;
I don’t intend to do the thing by halves,
I’m going to be very up to date indeed.
It is a collage that you’re going to read.
It might have been considered a bit of a rum do in its time, it now reads as humorously eccentric. It is fascinating too for its view of a historic Iceland that has disappeared in the 80 odd years since it was written (although Auden bemoans the move to towns from the countryside), for mentions of German tourists in search of the Aryan homeland and fleeting references to the Spanish Civil War, which started whilst Auden and MacNeice were in Iceland. The book ends with a humorous versified joint Last Will & Testament, which surprised me with its name dropping - John Betjeman may be expected, but Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess (both later revealed as Russian spies) were a surprise.
Overall, an enjoyable but not special book, with MacNeice’s letters from Hetty to Nancy are the most interesting reads, and Auden’s Letters to Lord Byron also working well.
As Auden says in his first “Letter to Lord Byron”:
Every exciting letter has enclosures,
And so shall this - a bunch of photographs,
Some out of focus, some with wrong exposures,
Press cuttings, gossip, maps, statistics, graphs;
I don’t intend to do the thing by halves,
I’m going to be very up to date indeed.
It is a collage that you’re going to read.
It might have been considered a bit of a rum do in its time, it now reads as humorously eccentric. It is fascinating too for its view of a historic Iceland that has disappeared in the 80 odd years since it was written (although Auden bemoans the move to towns from the countryside), for mentions of German tourists in search of the Aryan homeland and fleeting references to the Spanish Civil War, which started whilst Auden and MacNeice were in Iceland. The book ends with a humorous versified joint Last Will & Testament, which surprised me with its name dropping - John Betjeman may be expected, but Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess (both later revealed as Russian spies) were a surprise.
Overall, an enjoyable but not special book, with MacNeice’s letters from Hetty to Nancy are the most interesting reads, and Auden’s Letters to Lord Byron also working well.
January 1, 2022
A curious hodgepodge of a book compiled by the famous English poet Auden from his travels in Iceland and published in 1937. Obviously this way long, long before Iceland became the developed tourist-magnet that it is today and travel was very difficult, the country still very agrarian and poor. Living is rough, food is what they can scrape from the land and sea. He and his party travel all around the island on dirt roads by bus and mail cars and steamer ferries and lots of horse-riding. I really appreciated the more straight-forward travelogue and seeing the country pre-modernization through his keen eyes and humorous reporting. He does a great job of capturing the Icelandic people, the ways they talk and think, their wry observations and matter-of-fact approach to life. But there is a lot of ephemera like long uninterseting-to-me poems and random letters to people back home on other topics that breaks up the flow of the book - I skimmed to the travel parts, including an amazing horseback journey through the roadless SE corner of the country - very rugged and uncomfortable, but full of stunning untouched wild beauty - much like today.
November 15, 2025
Gelezen in de vertaling van Anneke Brassinga (uitgegeven door Veen).
In 1936 reisde W.H. Auden gedurende drie maanden door Ijsland, samen met Louis MacNeice, een bevriende schrijver. Brieven uit Ijsland is de literaire neerslag hiervan. Het reisboek wordt op de kaft omschreven als ongewoon, grillig en humoristisch, maar kon die belofte helaas niet inlossen.
Het boek is een potpourri van reisimpressies, Ijsland-quotes van voorgangers en brieven aan o.a. Isherwood en Audens vrouw Erika. De rode draad is een vierdelige 'Brief aan Lord Byron', waarin Auden Byron bijpraat over de ontwikkelingen in de afgelopen decennia. De impressies van Ijsland blijven oppervlakkig: nergens heb je het gevoel dat het land echt tot leven komt op de bladzijden. Brieven uit Ijsland is hopeloos gedateerd en zelfs als historisch document weinig interessant.
In 1936 reisde W.H. Auden gedurende drie maanden door Ijsland, samen met Louis MacNeice, een bevriende schrijver. Brieven uit Ijsland is de literaire neerslag hiervan. Het reisboek wordt op de kaft omschreven als ongewoon, grillig en humoristisch, maar kon die belofte helaas niet inlossen.
Het boek is een potpourri van reisimpressies, Ijsland-quotes van voorgangers en brieven aan o.a. Isherwood en Audens vrouw Erika. De rode draad is een vierdelige 'Brief aan Lord Byron', waarin Auden Byron bijpraat over de ontwikkelingen in de afgelopen decennia. De impressies van Ijsland blijven oppervlakkig: nergens heb je het gevoel dat het land echt tot leven komt op de bladzijden. Brieven uit Ijsland is hopeloos gedateerd en zelfs als historisch document weinig interessant.
May 4, 2017
Published in 1937, I first read this in 1978 (gulp) and again this year, nearly as much time having gone by since, which is very scary. I remember enjoying this as a teenager but remembered little of the detail, apart from the poem in the style of Byron's Don Juan. This is far from being a conventional travel book but somehow, through the poems, notes and letters both fictional and presumably genuine you do get a sense of Iceland as seen by English visitors in the 1930s, with a bit of the wider context of the events of the 1930s too. The letters from Hetty to Nancy are particularly funny. There's a useful bibliography tucked away near the beginning but hard to find. Amusing but probably not quite what people expected from a travel book, if that's what it is!
November 3, 2018
Quite the odd travel book. Auden and MacNeice traverse Iceland in 1936, commenting on the people and culture they encounter. Iceland has changed so much since then that it seems at times they are they are travelling in the 19th century rather than on the eve of WWII. Their travelogue is interspersed with lengthy poems by the authors, letters to other people, as well as an entertaining anthology of selections from other visitors' observations of Iceland. It's a remarkable book in many respects, but I didn't find myself as captivated as I had anticipated.
February 16, 2025
Found this book in a bookshop in Norway, as someone who frequently writes historical fiction set in Iceland — only to realise I'm from the same town as the author. Lovely resource for historical reference on a pretty niche subject, and also just a generally fascinating read.
July 17, 2024
'Sleep you black-eyed pig
Fall into a deep pit full of ghosts.'
Fall into a deep pit full of ghosts.'
May 25, 2021
mah...?
December 28, 2007
I am rather split brained about Letters From Iceland by W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice. There were pieces of it that had me roaring with laughter and other pieces where I just had to skip out of boredom or disinterest.
Letters From Iceland is a collection of writings inspire by a trip to Iceland. It was published in 1937 and has been reprinted a number of times. W. H. Auden provided about two-thirds of the pieces including a lengthy (and rather dull) epic poem called a "Letter to Lord Byron." Louis MacNeice provided the remaining third of the text.
My favorite parts of the book were the notes for tourists which includes practical advice on what to pack an who to dress, warnings about the food an transportation. The descriptions of the Icelandic traditions taken from a British point of view made for a humorous comparison with the dwarves in Pratchett's discworld novels; I was constantly reminded of Carrot.
My all time favorite piece of the book was a satiric letter "Hetty to Nancy" by MacNeice. It is an account of a disastrous group camping trip. Hetty recounts the problems of sleeping facing down hill, with sleeping on rocks and with tents in the rain when the tents haven't been properly pitched.
Letters From Iceland is a collection of writings inspire by a trip to Iceland. It was published in 1937 and has been reprinted a number of times. W. H. Auden provided about two-thirds of the pieces including a lengthy (and rather dull) epic poem called a "Letter to Lord Byron." Louis MacNeice provided the remaining third of the text.
My favorite parts of the book were the notes for tourists which includes practical advice on what to pack an who to dress, warnings about the food an transportation. The descriptions of the Icelandic traditions taken from a British point of view made for a humorous comparison with the dwarves in Pratchett's discworld novels; I was constantly reminded of Carrot.
My all time favorite piece of the book was a satiric letter "Hetty to Nancy" by MacNeice. It is an account of a disastrous group camping trip. Hetty recounts the problems of sleeping facing down hill, with sleeping on rocks and with tents in the rain when the tents haven't been properly pitched.
February 9, 2014
This is a strange little book but I did enjoy it. It's a collection pieces tangentially related to Iceland. It was sometimes a bit impenetrable - it seems to have been written for Auden's clique, or at least people who would have had a working knowledge of the society, people and politics of the 1930s. Names and events were frequently mentioned without explanation and some I knew but a lot of them didn't mean anything.
On the upside I really liked the letters to Byron and the strange little story about the women who join up with a girls school on their Icelandic tour. The last will and testament was worth it too.
It didn't exactly teach me much about Iceland as despite the fact it is nominally a travel book, it is almost 80 years out of date and not gives no useful guidance. It did give me a strange sense of the time Auden spent there though which is worth reading and I'm glad I read it before my trip.
On the upside I really liked the letters to Byron and the strange little story about the women who join up with a girls school on their Icelandic tour. The last will and testament was worth it too.
It didn't exactly teach me much about Iceland as despite the fact it is nominally a travel book, it is almost 80 years out of date and not gives no useful guidance. It did give me a strange sense of the time Auden spent there though which is worth reading and I'm glad I read it before my trip.
May 16, 2009
An enjoyable and occasionally very witty read. It's a shame Auden didn't really seem to have a lot of fun, or to like Iceland all that well. Since it was his love of Norse literature in part that drew him to Iceland, it would have been nice if he'd given some idea of how it felt to be in the land where the events took place, whether it was disappointment or whether there was some satisfaction in the pilgrimage. I think overall from inference Iceland was a disappointment to Auden. Journey to Iceland (the poem) expresses a longing for the isolation and 'non-Europeanness' of Iceland, and a deeper understanding of Grettir, Egil Skallagrímsson, Guðrún Osvifsdóttir et al. He either fails to find these things, or does find them and wishes he hadn't. Most of his bits are him complaining about the soup (which, in fairness, does sound a bit odd - hot marzipan flavour?).
February 10, 2013
A rambling but user-friendly blend of narrative, epistolary, commentary and poetry, the book takes one back to a time before blogs and interminable Facebook photo albums and demonstrates how experience and observation can be skillfully wielded by artists into the sublime and aesthetic, regardless of topic. I primarily picked this book up in order to grasp the full context of Auden's poem to Lord Byron, but the text, photos, maps and assorted details of his and Macniece's trip left me pleasantly lost for days. If only someone like, say, Marilynne Robinson wrote like this and took a trip to Sicily or something.
November 5, 2008
i had to wait about four months to finally get a copy of this from the nypl. if you try to buy a copy online it's like 80 dollars. my favorite parts were about the icelandic diet. i really did like how lazy and simple this book was but probably for this reason i couldn't propel myself through the second half. probably just more of the same anyway.
April 25, 2021
Auden and MacNeice were initially unsure how to write this. They finally adopted the voices of two British schoolgirls on holiday and wrote the entire thing in very fruity tones. Quite amusing.
Available at the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/lettersfr...
Available at the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/lettersfr...
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