Last November, I was given a rare opportunity: fly to Iceland for the crime fiction festival Iceland Noir, on the tourist bureau’s dime, and enjoy the glorious offerings of a small but mighty nation and their extraordinary literary world. I signed waivers stating that I would not walk on the moss, or visit a glacier without a guide. I invited my brand-new boyfriend to accompany me, and we spent days working on getting my passport in order, even as a government shutdown threatened to cut off air travel entirely. We researched museums to go to, and he planned bike routes for when I’d be busy at the fest. We were so young, so innocent, so excited (you see where this is going).

Alas, when man plans, God laughs, and I spent the entire trip holed up in my (4 star) hotel room with a bad case of the flu, reduced to enjoying the many sea birds of Reykjavik through my windows as my boyfriend scoured the city for pharmacies and sandwiches, nursing me through the next five days as I sweated through my fever, and putting on BabeTV, the weird Icelandic escort channel, whenever I needed a laugh. At the tail end of the trip, when the festival programming was already over, I finally felt recovered enough to do something tourist-y. We decided to go to the dick museum—the Icelandic Phallological Museum, to be exact—and it was…everything we could have asked for and more. There’s even a room dedicated to cryptids.

So, having spent almost my entire trip in isolation (you’re welcome, George RR Martin—I could have coughed on you and then we’d never see the end of Song of Ice and Fire), I decided that I still wanted to learn more about the Icelandic crime writing scene and how it rose to such international prominence. I asked the festival organizers if I could interview a few novelists about their unique position in the world of crime writing, and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and Ragnar Jonasson were kind enough to connect me with a wide range of crime novelists, both Icelandic and Iceland-adjacent, who were in turn kind enough to answer a few questions. I’ve assembled all the answers in the roundtable below—8 authors contributed to the discussion, and you can scroll to the bottom of the post for their full bios.

As readers can see from the responses, there’s no one way to be a mystery writer in Iceland. But the nation’s character, the drama of its nature, the isolation of its inhabitants, all play their parts in the literary psyche, and after reading these responses, I felt more convinced than ever that there is something truly special about Iceland’s writing scene. Anyone interested in learning more about Iceland Noir can check out the festival’s website here.

__________________________________

WHAT MAKES ICELAND SUCH FERTILE TERRITORY FOR MYSTERY NOVELS?

__________________________________

Ármann Jakobsson: The moment in Iceland for mystery was c. 2000, and I think the reason is that several talented readers were dedicating themselves to the genre and that made Icelanders more ready to accept Iceland as a scene for mystery novels. Possibly this goes hand in hand with the rise of crime fiction in general in the world.

Eva Björg Ægisdóttir: I think there is a cultural tendency toward emotional and social realism in Iceland. Crime fiction has become a way of examining society, both its tensions and its flaws, even in a country that on the surface is considered very safe. The crime rate is low, with only a few murders each year, although that has been changing in recent years.

For me, it also has to do with a deep curiosity about people and their motives. In a small and relatively sparse population, the idea that someone you know or someone close to you might be capable of something terrible feels especially unsettling. It brings crime very close to home.

And then there are the secrets. In Icelandic communities, things can be carried quietly across generations, never fully spoken about, but still shaping people’s lives. That kind of inherited tension is very fertile ground for mystery, especially in small towns, where shared knowledge becomes part of the town’s identity. And the town, in turn, becomes a part of its people.

The landscape plays its part too of course; the darkness, the isolation, the long winters. How open and stark it is, very beautiful but also very dangerous. It creates a mood where introspection is almost unavoidable, and where the boundary between the outer world and the inner one can begin to blur.

“Crime fiction has become a way of examining society, both its tensions and its flaws, even in a country that on the surface is considered very safe.”–Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Margrét Höskuldsdóttir: The people of these Nordic countries have a rich storytelling heritage, mainly derived from the fact that during long cold winters you had to be self-sufficient when it came to entertainment. The cold, dark and long winters must´ve given ample ideas for creating exciting, and sometimes terrifying, stories to keep your family members entertained.

Satu Rämö: Iceland is a small and peaceful country with big nature and powerful nature and sometimes pretty harsh weather conditions. We live with opposites (volcanoes-glaciers, small nation-big nature, dark winters-bright summers), I think that creates a good soil for imagination and storytelling. The literature heritage is very strong in Iceland, Icelanders wrote stories in their own native language already in the 13th century. The gems of Icelandic literature are Icelandic sagas and they were pretty much crime stories. Stories about revenge, destiny, death and violence. But also about love and strong family ties. I’m sure this heritage still affects crime writing today.

Ármann Jakobsson: Realism is a strong feature but otherwise I find the Icelandic crime novels very varied and diverse.

__________________________________

HOW DID YOU FIRST FALL IN LOVE WITH MYSTERIES?

__________________________________

 

Eliza Reid: English is my first language so I grew up devouring Agatha Christie novels (as well as Nancy Drew and Bobbsey twins). Mystery is still my go-to genre when I want something I know I’ll immerse myself in and finish quickly.

Quentin Bates: I didn’t exactly fall in love with mysteries, but with almost any fiction from far-off places. Sometime in the mid-70s I pulled a book from my mum’s bookshelves because I was curious about the unpronounceable name on the spine, which on closer inspection turned out to be two authors. These were Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, and the book was a detective story set in Stockholm – which was a far-off place in the 70s. I was completely hooked, read the whole series, and then… There was nothing. That’s all there was. It was like being given ten hits of a fabulous new drug and then having to go cold turkey. There was no more translated Nordic crime fiction until Henning Mankell and Peter Høeg came along a couple of decades later.

Jónína Leósdóttir: During a short stint as an Essex girl in my twenties, I had a job in London and the commute was two hours, door to door. On the crowded train journey, I was surrounded by serious looking men reading broadsheet newspapers, folding them like masters of origami. (Very few women, hardly any tabloids.) Neither the newspapers nor this complicated folding-business appealed to me, but I needed something to pass the time and that’s how I found and fell in love with mysteries. First, I read all the novels by Agatha Christie and then Ngaio Marsh, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James etc. until it was time to move back to Iceland. Then I completely stopped reading mysteries for a long time.

In Iceland, I started translating books from English to Icelandic and in 1988 I wrote my first book, which was a biography. Thirteen books later, in various genres, I turned to crime and this month sees the publication of my tenth crime novel.

Ármann Jakobsson: At home I found the mysteries of Agatha Christie, Sjöwall and Wahlöö and Ed McBain as a teenager. To me Agatha is still the queen of crime although it is sometimes hard to explain why. I think the main reason might be that although her novels are simple, she understands humans extraordinarily well and renders them plausibly.

Eva Björg Ægisdóttir: I didn’t fall in love with the kind of mysteries I am writing now, at least not in the beginning. I just fell in love with books.

As a child, I read everything I could get from the library; Astrid Lindgren, J. K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, C. S. Lewis and so many more. I just loved reading. I loved disappearing into the worlds that writers created. Sometimes (often) I even liked it more than my own world.

And I think that’s where it started. Because even in those books, there is always some kind of mystery. There is something hidden, something you don’t fully understand yet, something you want to figure out.

So for me, it didn’t begin with crime fiction. It began with that feeling of wanting to know what’s really going on beneath the surface and I think that’s what stayed with me.

__________________________________

WHAT IS YOUR WRITING ROUTINE?

__________________________________

Ármann Jakobsson: When I am inside a novel, I can write wherever and whenever. Some I have written in hotel lobbies or any place where I can hide away relatively unnoticed. Then I go home and write some more.

Margrét Höskuldsdóttir: My writing routine is that of a very unorganized person. But I try to start early in the day and get some words in when I have the house to myself. I am a big procrastinator so I usually end up writing into the night on the eve of my deadline. I have a small office at my house that I use for writing and the instrument of choice is the desktop computer. I find it more convenient to use that one rather than the laptop.

Eva Björg Ægisdóttir: I treat it like a normal job. I wake up, get my kids ready, make a very good cappuccino, and then I go to the office.

I’m lucky that my husband’s family owns a law firm, so I have an office there and easy access to anything law-related, which can be helpful when I’m writing. I usually work from nine to four, and then I go back home.

It didn’t begin like this. When I wrote my first books, I was sitting on the sofa, the laptop in my lap. But that didn’t work very well—especially not for my back! I’ve also found I’m much more efficient this way, and it’s also good to get out of the house, put on nice clothes and not be distracted by all the chores at home.

Quentin Bates: I work on both translations and my own stuff, and the routines are different. For translation, I try and average at least a thousand words a day. The next day I’ll read through that text and make corrections before moving on to the next chunk of text. This isn’t set in stone, and the process is a lot smoother if it’s a book I like. It’s preferable to be in touch with the author, but this doesn’t always happen.

Normally I work at a laptop at the kitchen table, or sometimes in the shed. Recently I’ve had to move to another room with a standing desk, as the kitchen chair was playing hell with my back. It took a while to get used to it, but now I’m happy to work on my feet.

It’s less certain with my own stuff. I work in the same places, but like to have at least an hour, preferably longer, to get immersed. I can’t write my own material in ten minutes here and twenty minutes there. I try to plot, but not in great detail, more a loose collection of waypoints. I’ve tried going on long walks to think plots through, that kind of thing. But that rarely works. Most ideas come when facing an empty screen.

“It is like fresh fish…If I leave my story and have a day or two off, the story starts to smell, it gets old and it is harder for me to continue.” –Satu Rämö 

Satu Rämö: I’m writing, at the moment, the Hildur crime book series; there are 3 books out in English and I’m now writing the 6th book in the series in Finnish. My writing routines have always been the same. I write mostly during day time when my children are at school. During my writing season I write approximately 5-10 pages a day, every day, no days off. It is like fresh fish: it is best to eat it right away. If you keep in for too long, it starts to smell bad. I feel the same about my writing. If I leave my story and have a day or two off, the story starts to smell, it gets old and it is harder for me to continue. 😀 To be able to write 5-10 pages a day I need 3 hours of good writing time and that usually means I have to spend 6-10 ours at the office. It takes time to start and get the flow going.

Eliza Reid: I write in my home office, but often for a first draft I write with my computer on my lap as I sit in a comfortable chair with my feet up, rather than at my desk. I also write when I can e.g. on flights and in hotel rooms. At home, I often write with a scented candle burning – I have a different candle for each writing project.

Skúli Sigurðsson: While writing my first book, Big Brother, I was working full time at the UN in Jordan so I did an hour of writing before work, a few hours after work twice a week and then a session or two over the weekend.

Since then my routine has varied but I generally write in the morning, until about noon, with a cup of coffee on hand, and spend the rest of the day on other work. Often I will have music on but I am doing that less lately. I write at my desk, on the sofa, at a café, in the park or at an airport. Anywhere, really. I always write on my trusty laptop, although I jot down a lot of ideas in notebooks and post-its.

I tend to set a daily goal of a certain number of words, usually around 1000, but I find it to be a double-edged sword when it comes to editing; when meeting a quota you tend to use more words than strictly necessary. Still, I haven’t found a better way of keeping the ball rolling consistently.

Jónína Leósdóttir: For two decades, I was a single mother, and I could not afford to take big financial risks. Therefore, I held on to my job as a journalist and editor, and used the evenings, weekends and holidays to write books in various genres and some drama. But at the end of 2005, I was no longer single, and my wonderful wife pushed me off the cliff, so to speak. With her encouragement, I resigned from my job and have been a full-time writer ever since.

I have a study at home, so no commute or dressing to impress. I could write, unkempt in my pyjamas, if I wanted to, and it has been known to happen when there is a deadline looming. However, most days I manage to get dressed and brew a large pot of tea before I start working. That is how I begin my day, seven days a week, all year round. I have such a long time to make up for, as I was already fifty when I got the opportunity to concentrate on writing books.

I write for as long as my back allows me to, with short breaks to brew more tea, walk on my treadmill and visit a physio therapist. I know, I know. I don’t sound like good company. So, does my wife regret that push, twenty years ago, I can hear you wondering? Well, I couldn’t possibly comment.

__________________________________

WHAT’S THE MOST ICONIC CRIME NOVEL IN ICELAND’S HISTORY? 

__________________________________

Margrét Höskuldsdóttir: Arnaldur Indriðason´s early novels, such as Jar City and Silence of the Grave, are iconic in that way that they set the tone for Icelandic mystery novels. But the one that has to be the most iconic for me personally is I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. It’s not often that you can remember exactly where you were when reading a certain book or the exact time for that matter. In this case I was sitting in my couch reading on Christmas eve, having been gifted this book. When my husband headed for bed I demanded that he´d wait for me as I was too afraid to be alone in the living room.

In Iceland, we have a similar, local trailblazer, Arnaldur Indriðason, who started writing crime novels thirty years ago. He changed the landscape of Icelandic literature and made the crime genre exciting for both readers and writers in our country.

Satu Rämö: There are so many but if I had to choose one I would say Arnaldur Indridasson’s Grafarþögn (in English Silence of the Grave). It is a masterpiece in atmospheric writing style. It is a crime story that explains the history of Iceland and shows that the problems of inequality and domestic violence are as true nowadays as they were decades ago.

Quentin Bates: I guess it has to be Arnaldur Indriðason’s Jar City. It wasn’t the first Icelandic crime novel, but it was the one that was a breakthrough outside Iceland – deservedly, as it’s an outstanding book. This was the one that was taken seriously in German and English translation, attracted great reviews and started the ball rolling. Arnaldur (and then Yrsa) also started to push open the floodgates in Iceland, where crime fiction hadn’t been taken all that seriously up to then. Today there are so many writers of crime fiction (every variety from cozy to seriously brutal) in Iceland that you could hardly throw a brick in Reykjavík without hitting one.

__________________________________

WHY DO YOU THINK THE WORLD HAS SUCH AN APPETITE FOR ICELANDIC CRIME FICTION?

__________________________________

Margrét Höskuldsdóttir: I think it has to with the fact that people like reading books that are set in a totally different setting from where they live. In general people like reading mysteries that are unlikely to unfold in their own surroundings. It´s nice to get a little scared while reading an intense novel, safely tucked under a blanket on your sofa. Iceland has unique opportunities for setting up stories that are set in isolated, dark areas where anything can happen. Where help is far away and the nature is harsh. Snowstorms, blackouts, areas that have no connections. And a country that is full of old stories of ghosts and folklore. Not to forget the people that live here and are shaped by these elements.

Eliza Reid: We have a phrase in Iceland “glöggt er gests augað” which means “a guest’s eyes see more clearly”. I only moved to Iceland in my 20s, so even though I have spent most of my adult life here, I have somewhat of an outsider’s perspective on the nation. For many people in the English speaking world, especially in North America, Iceland sounds distant, remote, and unusual (even though it is just as quick to travel to Iceland from New York as it is to travel from there to LA). Our landscape is sparse but stunning and our nature can be unforgiving and atmospheric – what better setting for crime?

‘We have a phrase in Iceland “glöggt er gests augað” which means “a guest’s eyes see more clearly”.’–Eliza Reid 

Jónína Leósdóttir: I can only guess, of course, but maybe it’s the remoteness and the fact that we are an island. A cold, dark place with limited access and a small population – and lots of wilderness – seems an ideal setting for something scary. Plus, we have such fantastic writers who are all descended from people, who lived up in the North Atlantic long before the age of technology and passed the time by making up and telling each other stories.

Skúli Sigurðsson: In part, it is likely a man-bites-dog sort of thing. Iceland is mostly known as a safe and peaceful country with a low crime and murder rate, and getting a look into its shadier parts of such a place is intriguing.

Icelandic nature, with its mad weather, dark winters, volcanoes, glaciers and what have you, no doubt also plays a role. It is exotic to outsiders and so ever-present that it is not a mere backdrop but an active presence or entity in whatever story is being told. Much as it is in the life of those who live here.

Of course, this would not go far without quality and consistency, and that is likely what keeps readers engaged and coming back for more.

Quentin Bates: I’m not sure the appetite for Icelandic crime fiction is exactly voracious. In the UK and North America, any translated fiction is quite niche, so crime fiction is almost a niche within a niche. However, readers of translated fiction are without doubt people of the best taste and discernment, and they’re a genuinely loyal and enthusiastic readership. Having said that, it feels at the moment that Nordic has dipped in popularity with publishers and the appetite for new Icelandic (or Nordic in general) authors has waned. There are some out there who are producing great material that isn’t taking off as well as it would have a few years ago.

There is a particular feel to Nordic crime fiction, and to my mind there are different flavours. There’s a certain atmosphere in Swedish crime fiction that can be subtly different from the also distinct Norwegian, Danish or Finnish varieties, and Icelandic fiction also has its own tang. Maybe it’s the sulphur in the water that comes through in the prose of Icelandic writers and there’s something addictive about that? For myself, I admire the way a lot of Icelandic writers seem happy to go out on a limb and take chances with (sometimes bizarre) ideas, and that Icelandic publishers just let them get on with things a UK or US publisher would be less likely to support. It doesn’t always work… But when it does, it can be something magnificent.

__________________________________

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE (NON-MYSTERY) CLASSIC OF ICELANDIC LITERATURE?

__________________________________

Ármann Jakobsson: I would recommend Njáls saga. It is from c. 1280 but still more novel than most things published today.

Satu Rämö: Skugga-Baldur (in English The Blue Fox) by Sjón, English translation by Victoria Cribb. It is a story about an Icelandic pastor and a fox hunt. It combines themes from Icelandic folklore but also discusses ethical questions about life and equality.

Skúli Sigurðsson: It would have to be Independent People by Halldór Laxness, our Nobel laureate in literature. It captures the Icelandic national psyche and many of our idiosyncrasies in a way that is still relevant and accurate some ninety years later. I really do not think you can understand the Icelandic people without reading it.

Eliza Reid: Our most famous non-mystery writer from Iceland is Halldór Laxness, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. But current literary fiction writers I admire include Sjón, Fríða Ísberg, Hallgrímur Helgason, Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, and Gerður Kristný (all of whom are available in English translation).

__________________________________

TELL US ABOUT YOUR LATEST BOOK.
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?

__________________________________

Skúli Sigurðsson: My latest novel is a thriller called A Midsummer Apocalypse, a provisional English title as it has, as yet, not been translated. It sees an investigative journalist caught up in an armed stand-off between a fanatical pagan cult and the Icelandic authorities. There is a hostage situation, treason, betrayal and megalomania, all the trimmings. Violence and mayhem ensue, naturally.

As for my next book, things are in the early stages so I am keeping the cards close to my vest for now. Suffice it to say I am bouncing around a couple of ideas. One is more or less a whodunnit featuring characters from A Midsummer Apocalypse. The other is a semi-historical thriller set in the late 1970s, picking up where my second novel, The Man from São Paulo, left off, inspired by a well-known unsolved Icelandic case.

Nothing etched in stone, we will have to see how things turn out.

Ármann Jakobsson: I have one novel left in my own crime series and it is haunting me these days. A lot of things are already in place but the headache is always to find a mysterious enough mystery.

Eva Björg Ægisdóttir: My latest work is about a woman who, after a car accident leaves her unable to work, becomes increasingly absorbed in podcasts, especially true crime. Eventually, she starts one of her own. After a very successful first series, she is approached by an older woman who tells her about a case from her childhood: when she was young, her best friend disappeared from a car while her mother was inside a grocery store. The case was never solved.

As the podcaster begins to investigate, the story starts to shift. Small details don’t quite add up, and it becomes clear that not everything is as it first seemed, neither in the past nor in the present.

What draws me most, both in this project and in my work generally, is the psychological dimension, especially how people justify their actions, and how far they are willing to go to protect themselves and the stories they’ve told themselves about the past. I always seem to go back to memory, how unreliable it is, how it is re-edited over the years, and still becomes part of our identity. It’s interesting to me how the same event can take very different shapes in different people’s minds.

“I have, of course, started planning my next book. What else would I do, go on holiday? Perish the thought.”–Jónína Leósdóttir 

Jónína Leósdóttir: I have a new crime novel coming out in Iceland this month. In English, the title would be Absolute Gem. It’s my tenth book in that genre and my first standalone.

The book starts with retired teacher Gemma (nickname, Gem) waking up in ICU and being told she has had a stroke. She is paralysed down one side of her body, so there is obviously a long road of recovery ahead, but all Gem can think about is getting back home to hide a body that simply must not be found … or all hell would break loose.

I have, of course, started planning my next book. What else would I do, go on holiday? Perish the thought. This time, the main character will be a man called Oscar and, naturally, he will be in a spot of bother. It is definitely time to spotlight a male now, as I have written six novels about a nosey woman who has been called the Icelandic Miss Marple and now, the standalone about Gemma. But maybe Oscar’s wife will muscle in and demand centre stage. It’s early days.

Margrét Höskuldsdóttir: My latest novel, Lullaby for the Lost, is set in the rural Westfjords of Iceland. It´s the second novel in my Detectives Ragna and Bergur series. In this one Bergur has moved to his old hometown in the Westfjords and has to investigate the disappearance of two young kayakers that were last seen near a sea farming pond. At the same time a couple is renovating an old house on the outskirts of town. What they don´t know it that the house has a dark history and soon they start to feel like they are sharing the house with someone. Or something.

I am currently working on the third book in this series. What inspired this one is the thought that it takes a village to raise a child, but if the child is not embraced by the village it might burn it down to feel the warmth. Remains of a body are found on a mountain pass (mountain road) and seem to be connected to a 50 year old cold case. The traces lead us all the way back to the volcanic eruption of Vestmannaeyjar in 1973 when children were send away from the erupting island and away from their families to keep them safe. But when keeping them away from an imminent threat they might face another.

Eliza Reid: My latest book ,published on May 5, is titled “The First Lady Next Door: A Memoir of Iceland, Identity, and Unexpected Adventure” – it is non-fiction, about my time serving as First Lady of Iceland (from 2016-2024) and is I hope a funny, smart, and inspiring book about how to make the most of unexpected moments in life. My next novel is my second mystery, currently titled “A Chorus of Secrets”, and will be published in spring 2027 (both by Sourcebooks in the U.S., Simon & Schuster in Canada).

Quentin Bates: Right now I’m working on edits of the translations of Toxic by Jón Atli Jónasson and Ice Bears by Sólveig Pálsdóttir. These are very different crime novels set in Reykjavík, and both have been great to work on as these are some of my favourite Icelandic authors.

Apart from that, I’m working on a new series of my own that should appear later this year – possibly under a suitably Nordic pseudonym. The first one takes place in a hotel where there are all kinds of secrets behind the shabby luxury facade.

Then there’s a possibility that Gunnhildur might make a return after her long break, as the last novel in the series appeared in 2022. I hadn’t expected she would be back, but interest has been expressed and I’m tinkering with a new story now. It’s like meeting an old friend again.

*

Contributor Bios:

Skúli Sigurðsson: (b. 1985) debuted with the novel Big Brother (2022), the first in the Iceland Chronicle series, which was awarded the Crime Novel of the Year Award in Iceland and shortlisted for the Glass Key Award. The series follows the work and exploits of journalists at the Iceland Chronicle and detective Héðinn Vernharðsson against the backdrop of Iceland’s rugged nature. Well received by readers and critics alike, Skúli’s work has been described as thrilling, imaginative and excelling among Icelandic thrillers.

A lawyer by education, Skúli worked for the UN in Jordan and has a background in human rights and journalism. His literary inspirations include Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming.

Jónína Leósdóttir: One of Iceland’s best-loved writers, with a career behind her as an award-winning journalist, playwright, translator, biographer and writer of novels for young adults, before turning to crime fiction with her Edda series that has proved highly popular in Iceland. Deceit is the first in a new series of crime novels featuring Reykjavík detective Soffía and her ex-husband, English psychologist Adam.

Jónína was instrumental in establishing The Icelandic Women’s Literary Prize in 2007 and is now an honorary member of the association that awards the prize. In 2013, she published Jóhanna and I, a memoir of life with her partner Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, Iceland’s former Prime Minister.

Eva Björg Ægisdóttir: Born in Akranes in 1988, Eva moved to Trondheim, Norway to study my MSc in Globalization when she was 25. After moving back home having completed her MSc, she knew it was time to start working on her novel. Eva has wanted to write books since she was 15 years old, having won a short story contest in Iceland. Eva worked as a stewardess to make ends meet while she wrote her first novel, The Creak on the Stairs. The book went on to win the CWA Debut Dagger, the Blackbird Award, was shortlisted for the Capital Crime Readers’ Awards, and became a number one bestseller in Iceland.

Margrét Höskuldsdóttir: born on November 29, 1972, in Þingeyri, Dýrafjörður, but moved to the capital city during her teenage years. She completed a B.Ed. degree from the Iceland University of Education and has most of her professional career worked as a primary school teacher. Margrét also holds a master’s degree in art history from the University of Edinburgh.

Margrét has been surrounded by books since childhood and has a great interest in literature and poetry. The desire to write a novel emerged in recent years, and her first novel, Dalurinn, saw the light of day in the summer of 2022. Dalurinn is a thriller set in the Westfjords’ nature and touches on stories and folklore intertwined with the setting. There, we meet a young woman who goes to a remote valley in the west to finish her master’s thesis in folklore and intends to use the solitude for that purpose. The setting of the novel is the walley that her grandparents used to own a majority in and where Margret and her family now own a summerhouse in.

Margrét lives in the Vogahverfi district of Reykjavík with her husband, two sons, and their dog Tinni, who enjoys walks where Margrét weaves new threads for her next novels.

Quentin Bates: made his escape from suburbia at the end of the seventies as a gap year turned into a gap decade spent in the north of Iceland. He worked ashore and at sea before returning to England and, once finally ashore for good, drifted by accident into journalism.

Finally the lure of fiction became too strong to resist. Sergeant Gunnhildur and the series of novels she features in have their origins in a deep affection for Iceland and its people, and an intimate knowledge of Icelandic society and its language, customs and quirks.

Today he divides his time between the north of Iceland and the south of England, translating books from Icelandic in addition to working on his own fiction.

Satu Rämö: Hæ hæ! My name is Satu Rämö, I’m a Finnish-Icelandic author of bestselling nordic blue crime series called HILDUR. International rights are sold to 30 languates and during the first 4 years HILDUR books have sold over 1,5 million copies worldwide.

I was born in Finland in 1980 and moved to Iceland twenty years ago as an economics exchange student. Instead of macroeconomics I ended up studying Icelandic culture, literature and mythology.

Living in Iceland, I have written extensively about Nordic culture and life in the North Atlantic, blending my firsthand experiences into my novels.

I live with my family in the small town of Ísafjörður in northwest Iceland. I love ice cream, rye bread and sparkling wines. I drink my coffee with cream as often as possible.

Ármann Jakobsson: professor in mediaeval Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland. Area of specialisation: Medieval literature. Cultural studies. Folklore. Sagas of Icelanders, kings’ sagas, þættir, legendary sagas, eddic poetry, skaldic poetry, late medieval poetry, Sturlunga saga, J.R.R. Tolkien. The supernatural, the marginal, royal ideology, medieval aesthetics, history of scholarship.

Eliza Reid: Eliza Reid is a bestselling writer, public speaker, gender equality advocate, and cofounder of the acclaimed Iceland Writers Retreat. She was born and raised in Canada but has lived in Iceland for more than twenty years. Her first book, Secrets of the Sprakkar: Iceland’s Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World, was an instant bestseller in Canada and Iceland, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Pick, and translated into numerous languages. From 2016 to 2024, Eliza served in the unofficial role of First Lady while her husband was President of Iceland. Eliza lives in the outskirts of Reykjavik with her husband and four children.

***

This year’s festival will take place between November 11th and 14th. You can find more information here, or by clicking the image below.