With a remarkable low crime rate, Iceland seems to foster the type of literature that can chill you to the bone. The Icelandic crime writer Vilborg Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s first crime novel translated into English in 2008, was The Day is Dark. Learn more about Nordic noir – crime scene Iceland.
Vilborg Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (born 1963) has been writing since 1998 but it’s interesting to recall that she began her writing career with books for children and young readers. She scooped the Icelandic Children’s Book Prize in 2003.
Her début crime-novel “Last Rituals” was published in Scandinavia in 2005, published in the US in 2007, and the UK in January 2008. It was translated into English by Bernard Scudder,
Yrsa is the rare author who truly gets better with each new book, but then nothing about Yrsa Sigurdardottir is typical. As director at one of Iceland’s largest engineering firms, Yrsa’s second job just happens to be as a bestselling crime novelist with a growing international readership and fantastic movie adaptations of two of her novels, the first one being I Remember You. So far, she has written 20 crime-fiction books.
The central character in her first crime novels was Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, a lawyer, and Yrsa was soon hailed as “Iceland’s Queen of Crime”.
Yrsa has a confident command of the crime novel form, and she invariably spins together a heady combination of tension and unease, with a mixture of ironic humor. The lack of criminals in Iceland might do little to inspire gruesome plots, but the country’s small population (about 300,000 people) and the dramatic landscape might be a perfect backdrop for imaged crime.
**********************************************
Related: Exploring Nordic Noir
**********************************************
The personal life of the protagonist plays an important role in her books, but it is never allowed to overwhelm the crux of a good crime story: a gripping plot. She has brought a breath of fresh air to Nordic crime-writing, by turning away from the Scandinavian gloom of her confrères in favor of a light touch of irony. The scenes she loves to write most are the ones where characters have no safety net.
Yrsa makes use of themes from Icelandic tradition and history: in Last Rituals, for instance, Norse prehistory and Icelandic magical traditions are brought into a contemporary murder case, while in My Soul to Take, folk legends of ghosts and infanticide complicate a gruesome murder. But Yrsa does not confine her heroine to Iceland: in her fourth book, Veins of Ice (2008), Þóra investigates a mysterious disappearance in Greenland.
Her 20th consecutive crime novel, Can’t Run, Can’t Hide, is a tense tale set on a secluded fjord, a typical book in the Nordic noir genre. On a cold winter evening a neighbor visits the house of a family that has not been seen in a week. No one comes to the door when he knocks. After breaking down the back door, his worst fears are realized. Their home is now a horrific crime scene.
Policeman Týr and forensic pathologist Iðunn are called to the house to investigate. As the case advances, harrowing secrets about the family are revealed. Along with a young policeman Karó, the investigative team quickly realize that the case forces them to face their own suppressed past and opens a Pandora”s box to much darker crimes.
Sigurðardóttir now lives with her husband and children in the small suburb of Seltjarnarnes, a ten-minutes-drive from Iceland’s capital. Her novels are all set in her home country.
Nordic Noir – Crime Scene Iceland, written by Tor Kjolberg