Iceland Quotes

“The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.”
― Slavoj Žižek

“Are you saying that you people knew about these amorophobots all the time?"
"Of course we did. They attacked us in Iceland. Remember?"
"No. I was unconscious.”
― Eoin Colfer, The Atlantis Complex

“There is no more sagacious animal than the Icelandic horse. He is stopped by neither snow, nor storm, nor impassable roads, nor rocks, glaciers, or anything. He is courageous, sober, and surefooted. He never makes a false step, never shies. If there is a river or fjord to cross (and we shall meet with many) you will see him plunge in at once, just as if he were amphibious, and gain the opposite bank.”
― Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

“There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“It was not hard to believe a beautiful woman capable of murder, Margret thought.As it says in the sagas, Opt er flago i fogru skinni. A witch often has fair skin.”
― Hannah Kent, Burial Rites

“Neither mine nor other people's prospects seem particularly pleasing just at the moment, and I have fantasies of going to Iceland, never to return. As it is, I tell myself not to remember the past, not to hope or fear for the future, and not to think in the present, a comprehensive program that will undoubtedly have very little success.”
― Edward Gorey, Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer

“Wir sind alle ein bisschen gestorben in diesem Krieg, glaube ich. Wie meine Mutter immer gesagt hat. Krieg tötet alle, auch die, die ihn überleben.”
― Hallgrimur Helgason

“The Icelanders are the most intelligent race on earth, because they discovered America and never told anyone.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If ever I hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference to a Sub-Centre–preferably to Iceland. Good morning.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“The snow grew deeper as we laboured down the hill. The land was a flat white pall, spread out like rumpled wool.
Into the distance stretched the solid sea, sullen and murky beneath the ice.
The sea will trick a man, seeming frozen and steadfast on the surface, but under the white crust, the black water gulps greedily at the breathing world above.
In time, I knew, despite everything that had happened, the sun would rise and the light would glitter off the ice, like shards of glass.
The world would glow.”
― Caroline Lea, The Glass Woman

“A chill wind blew across the frozen water. There was no marker to show where the land ended and the sea began, except for the blocks of solid sea, where the water had frosted over, shifted, then frozen
again. Tiny slabs of ice squatted, stacked like tombstones.
We walked out onto the crusted water. The ice groaned under our feet, the rumble of an Arctic bear, warning as the dark water beneath shifted. We stopped. My heart beat in my throat. I waited for the crack of the ice, the roar of the water.
The world held its breath.”
― Caroline Lea, The Glass Woman

“Most of the time, he’s controlling, with the temperament of a troll. Come to think of it, he has the manners of one too. And I do not like that he tried to kill me. Twice.”
― Demi Winters, The Road of Bones

“Poem of the day 1. nóvember 2010:

Tunglskin
Og vatnið starir, starir köldum augum
á stirndan himin yfir bleikum tindum.
Og inn í dalnum dökkir skuggar trjánna við dapra geilsa tunglsins stíga dans.

Og yfir sandinn, langar óraleiðir,
lýsir tunglið spor þín, þreytti maður,
og bregður köldum, annarlegum glampa
á andlit þitt.

Ég sé þig hverfa, hverfa inn í skuggann.
Og yfir öllu vakir þögnin - þögnin.”
― Steinn Steinarr

“The Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland were all found by accident when ships were driven off course in bad weather; nobody just set out for a far horizon. It is also important to remember that many of these Viking voyagers were simply never seen again.”
― Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

“By the time the war ended, Iceland was a changed country. Not least among the changes, in 1944 it had negotiated full independence from Denmark. Now it was free to negotiate its own relations with the rest of the world. Because of cod, it had moved in one generation from a fifteenth-century colonial society to a modern postwar nation.”
― Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

“We were but a step away from the vagrants and exiles who are left to beg by the roads until they were murdered by the cold and buried by the snow.”
― Caroline Lea, The Glass Woman

“This land will kill you, if it can. We Icelanders are forged of different metal from the soft foreigners – even the Barbary pirates did not stay long. Have you ever known a Danish trader to winter here from choice?’
I shrugged. How did this concern me, or the people’s morbid curiosity?
‘We seem strong, Jón, all of us, but we are like grass – we bend so the wind will not break us. You are like the sea: you surge forward again and again. See yourself now. Your parents are dead, your croft is falling apart and your boat is riddled with holes, yet you don’t stop.’
I spread my hands. ‘I don’t want to die.’
‘You want to live. You want a better life than the one you were given.”
― Caroline Lea, The Glass Woman

“Sometimes we woke in the night, huddled against the cold. Then, in the darkness, the world and everything in it became as skinless as water, no boundaries to show where one wave ended and the next began, our bodies like paired oars, each movement driving us further into the unknown. Time and sensation blurred. Tiny moments of golden brilliance, gossamer-thin and stretched to breaking, in a life otherwise steeped in grim shadow.
I did not simply hold Pétur in my arms; I embraced him with blood and bone, clasped him with muscle and spirit, everything that I was and hoped to be.
God might strike me down, but I felt saved and whole. Afterwards, we fell asleep intertwined. In those last moments of wakefulness, blinking up at the stars, as I sensed Pétur’s sweat cooling on my skin, I felt utterly human and fallen, and utterly content. And in those heat-soaked rags of time, I wished for every mountain in Iceland to shudder down rocks upon us, concealing us for ever from the gaze of the world. If we were ever found, our bodies would be dragged from the rubble together: tangled, knotted – inseparable.
But such moments of savage contentment are as fleeting as the reflection of the swelling moon blinking upon the surface of the sea.
Only ever minutes old, they dissolve with a passing cloud, or a gust of wind.
In every human heart glows a tiny flame of hope that tomorrow will bring a love that might satisfy the smouldering yearning to be known.
In some hearts, that fire is greedy and becomes a devouring inferno. It leaves only dead ash and dry dust behind. The wind whirls it into emptiness.
But there is such heat while it burns … And the light is infinite.”
― Caroline Lea, The Glass Woman

“تشمخ الجبال فوق الحياة والموت، وهذه البيوت المتلاصقة على اللسان الساحلي. نحن نعيش في قاع تجويف، يمر الصباح ،يتحول الى مساء، تغمره سكينة العتمة، تتوهج النجوم. نجوم تتألق الى الأبد فوقنا كما لو أن لديها رسالة عاجلة، إنما أي رسالة وممن؟ ماذا تريد منا، او لعل الأهم ربما ،ماذا نريد نحن منها؟”
― Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Himnaríki og helvíti

“They maintain that while gathering with loved ones is central to Iceland's holiday season, so is spending quality time with some new books.”
― Alex Palmer

“Konden we politici die kunst als hobby wegzetten maar een tijdje laten afkoelen op de Ijslandse hooglanden. Als een vis op het droge zouden ze naar cultuur liggen happen. Niet als entertainment maar als datgene wat de mensheid van mosland onderscheidt.”
― Laura Broekhuysen, Flessenpost uit Reykjavik

“أين الضوء، أين الربيع، أما كان هناك في يوم عشب أخضر؟”
― Jón Kalman Stefánsson, حزن الملائكة

“It is as natural to the Icelandic heart to turn to poetry in times of stress as for another to search his Bible.”
― Laura Goodman Salverson, The viking heart

“One day, the one you love will tear your throat out. One day, the sun and the moon will fall to their wolves. The Earth will flash to clinker in the red-giant rush of stellar evolution, the universe drift to static and silence resolved, and the gods walk quietly across wind-hushed Iðavöllr.”
― Sonya Taaffe

“The Icelanders were struck by the number of times I'd visited their country: That trip, in 2009, was number fourteen. Hjalti came over and quizzed me, in Icelandic, patiently reframing his questions until, with my limited grasp of the language, I finally understood, but still some were hard to answer: Why do you come here so often? I kept Icelandic horses at home, so it wasn't just the riding. How to explain that, in Iceland, I was a different person? At home, I was a master of words and grammar. Here, I spoke like a child. I was spoken to as a child. They told me stories.

I love the sagas, I said, all the old stories.

Hjalti nodded, satisfied, but I knew it wasn't a complete answer. In 1992, I attended a lecture at the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In Iceland, Gillian Overing noted, the center is the margin. Geography is inside out. People settle on the temperate edges of the island, while its interior is a glacial desert, cold, inhospitable, and not even crossable most of the year. "What kind of self," she mused, "might these places reflect?" What kind of self has wilderness at its heart?”
― Nancy Marie Brown, Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland's Elves Can Save the Earth

“My heart constricts because I am sure she does not see an aurora borealis attached to my skull when she looks at me.”
― Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Borealis

“Ást mín á Arnóri hefur engan stað til að fara á núna. Stundum vildi ég að ég gæti fangað hana, lokað hana inni, en þá veit ég að ég myndi ég sakna hennar. Núna streymir hún bara frá mér í allar áttir hvenær sem er – kemur stundum út í tárum, stundum í brosi. Ég vildi að Arnór gæti séð mig núna. Ég held hann yrði stoltur. Hann sá eitthvað í mér sem enginn annar sá. Eitthvað sem fékk hann til að brosa í hvert skipti sem hann sá mig. Og ég bíð stundum eftir því að sjá hann birtast í dyragættinni heima hjá mér, eða úti einhvers staðar, á bar eða eitthvað, og brosa þessu breiða brosi sínu. Ég sver það er það fallegasta sem ég hef séð.”
― Ísak Regal, Sara og Dagný og ég

“Við vorum stödd á Ægisíðunni. Það var dimmt úti og stjörnubjart. Nóttin hélt okkur föstum í viðjum sínum. Það voru norðurljós á himninum. Þau voru græn og leiftrandi. En mér fannst það ekki skipta máli. Ég hafði séð þau áður. Ég hafði séð svo margt áður. Hvolfið þakti það sem umlukti okkur og hún rykkti höfðinu til hliðar og upp. En hún var ekki að horfa á stjörnurnar. Stjörnurnar voru að horfa á hana,”
― Ísak Regal, Sara og Dagný og ég

“These dreams of far-off islands, lighthouses... What were they about? Like something calling me. That postcard my dad had sent, who knew when, with an image of an island in the Atlantic. I kept thinking of this National Geographic story I had read as a kid, about a matrilineal family of lighthouse keepers in Iceland, women who wore sealskin coats and were said by the locals to be descended from a Selkie woman. The Icelandic mermaids. Maybe I was like that--- too much time on the land, forgetting my true mermaid self, having lost my sea skin.”
― Victoria Benton Frank, The Violet Hour

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