Centered on the turbulent life of a tenth-century Icelandic poet, this saga recounts the career of Kormakr Ögmundarson and his enduring, troubled love for Steingerðr. As one of the Icelanders' sagas, it belongs to the early body of medieval Nordic narrative that blends history, legend, and verse.The text is distinctive for preserving a substantial corpus of skaldic poetry attributed to Kormakr, much of it devoted to his passion and frustration in love. Drawing heavily on oral tradi...

This is the story/saga of a poet, poor and proud, with all the strength of a Viking and all the weakness of genius. He loves a fine lady, a spoiled child; who bewitches him, and jilts him, and jilts him again. In true Viking style he fights for her, kills for her, writes verse for her, and rises, for her sake, to the height of all that a man in his age could achieve.Then, after years, he has her at his feet, and learns of her heartlessness and worthlessness. He bids her farewell; b...

After coming through the blizzard that almost cost them everything, Jens and the boy are far from home, in a fishing community at the edge of the world.Taken in by the village doctor, the boy once again has the sense of being brought back from the grave. But this is a strange place, with otherworldly inhabitants, including flame-haired Álfheiður, who makes him wonder whether it is possible to love two women at once; he had believed his heart was lost to Ragnheiður, the daughter of ...

Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017Keflavik: a town that may be the darkest place in Iceland, surrounded by black lava fields, hemmed in by a sea that may not be fished, and site of the U.S. military base, whose influences shaped Icelandic culture from the '50s to the dawning of the new millennium.Ari - a writer and publisher - lands back in Keflavik from Copenhagen. His father is dying, and he is flooded by memories of his youth in the '...

A NEW YORK TIMES GLOBETROTTING PICK!Sometimes, in small places, life becomes bigger.SUMMER LIGHT AND THEN COMES THE NIGHT is a profound and playful masterwork from one of Iceland's most beloved authors that explores the dreams and desires of ordinary people in a rural town.In a village of only four hundred inhabitants, life could seem unremarkable. Yet in this remote town, a new road to the city ha...

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER AND WINNER OF THE ICELANDIC LITERATURE PRIZE"The Icelandic Dickens" Irish Examiner"Stefánsson shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy" EILEEN BATTERSBY, T.L.S. Supplement"A wonderful, exceptional writer . . . A timeless storyteller" CARSTEN JENSEN"Sometimes, in small places, life becomes bigger"Sometimes a distan...

In a remote part of Iceland, a boy and his friend Barður join a boat to fish for cod. A winter storm surprises them out at sea and Barður, who has forgotten his waterproof as he was too absorbed in 'Paradise Lost', succumbs to the ferocious cold and dies. Appalled by the death and by the fishermen's callous ability to set about gutting the fatal catch, the boy leaves the village, intending to return the book to its owner.The extreme hardship and danger of the journey is of little c...

It is three weeks since the boy came to town, carrying a book of poetry to return to the old sea captain - the poetry that did for his friend Bárður. Three weeks, but already Bárður's ghost has faded. Snow falls so heavily that it binds heaven and earth together.As the villagers gather in the inn to drink schnapps and coffee while the boy reads to them from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Jens the postman stumbles in half dead, having almost frozen to his horse. On his next journey to the wi...

The arctic explorer's classic text on the benefits of an all-meat diet chronicles his experiences and clinical studies of Inuit food habits.Arctic explorer and anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson spent years living with indigenous Inuit and Eskimo people. He noted their general healthiness (and good teeth), and an absence of many of the diseases that plagued western cultures, such as scurvy, heart disease, and diabetes. Observing their dietary hab...

"Comparisons do not do justice to the complexity of Stefansson's book, nor the uniqueness of his prose" DANIEL MASON, author of North Woods"Stefánsson shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy" EILEEN BATTERSBY, TLS"A rich depiction of life, love and loss . . . Stefánsson is a writer of great scope and imagination" RONAN HESSION, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul"

A modern saga spanning the whole of the 20th century, by one of Iceland's most celebrated writers.At the beginning of this story there is death, and yet it is a celebration of life - the passion between a man and a woman, forbidden love, violence, sorrow, betrayal. Happiness and misfortune are passed down from one generation to the next. The sorrow over what was and what might have been weighs heavily on the characters and at the end of this chain, for now, stands ...

"Stefansson...tells how he became an explorer...how he learned to hunt seal and caribou, what the Eskimo are like and how they live." -Bellingham Herald, Jan. 31, 1923"Describes...how the Eskimos live, hunt, ...build a snow house,...fish through ice,...hunt seals, caribou and polar bears." -Ottawa Citizen, April 28, 1923"Tells the remarkable story of his first trip down the Mackenzie...the reader realizes what indomitable pluck must have been require...