Word: icelandic
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...chilly morning outside the hamlet of Reykjahlid in northern Iceland, Hallgrimur Jonasson lifts the edge of a soggy plank of wood lying in the clay to expose a small hole in the ground. "This is the rye-bread bakery," he says, yanking his hand back from a waft of scalding, sulfurous steam. A chef in a nearby hotel, Jonasson estimates his kitchen staff bake roughly three tons of the sweet, dense rye bread in the hole every summer to meet the growing demand, mostly from tourists, for the exotic carb. The bread's price tag - up nearly 20% from last...
Indridason writes tersely, his descriptions as hard and sparse as the Icelandic countryside. In person, he has a low-key manner, a receding hairline and an engaging smile. Erlendur, he says, is "part of the history of Iceland in the late 20th century when it changed from being a very poor peasant society to a very rich one." The detective is popular, he reckons, because "he's very flawed but very human. People identify with Erlendur maybe because of loneliness and failure. He's a horrible family man, but a perfect policeman...
...strong dose of social realism in the novels, in keeping with Scandinavian tradition. Domestic violence is a central theme in Silence of the Grave, which won a British Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger award in 2005. Arctic Chill explores the tensions caused by a recent influx of immigrants to Iceland. But Indridason tempers the sociology with a big dollop of old-fashioned suspense. He's a fan of Alfred Hitchcock, and takes pains to entice his readers with an intriguing first chapter. Hitchcock would probably have relished the first scene of Silence of the Grave: a baby at a birthday...
...fictional Erlendur's success has spawned a wave of young crime novelists in Iceland. Until Indridason, Icelandic literature consisted primarily of medieval sagas and the somber novels of Nobel laureate Halldor Laxness. Indridason has overcome the skepticism of local critics by taking pains to remain credible to his compatriots: "There are no car chases or explosions. It has to be small scale. You couldn't have five or six murders...
Erlendur isn't a self-portrait, but Indridason shares some of his detective's disdain for the way Iceland has changed. "It happened so fast, we haven't grasped it yet. Two to three generations ago we had nothing at all, and then all of a sudden we had everything," he says. Now, with the economic crisis, "I think people will stop this endless craving for more, for cars, money and houses, and hopefully will go back to basics." If that means quiet evenings at home reading about Erlendur's latest exploits...