“On this occasion, I think of my book-loving country, Iceland, which has kept its watchful eye on me ever since I took my first steps as an author,” said Halldór Laxness when he returned to Iceland with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.

“I believe that we need poetry, if we want to come through the storm,” said the author Thor Vilhjálmsson in an interview with Sagenhaftes Island, shortly before his death.

Gunnar Gunnarsson is by no means a forgotten writer. Karl-Ludwig Wetzig has just completed his German translation of Gunnar's Svartfugl/The Black Cliffs/Schwarze Vögel, a novel based partly on the author's own complicated person life.

“The old woman's face in the window contained a millennium of Greenland's history,” says the photographer Ragnar Axelsson. His newest book, Last Days of the Arctic, is a collection of photographs taken in Greenland.

"It would be best to get reviews by E-mail." Crime novelist Yrsa Sigurðardóttir sits with silver-varnished fingernails at home on her sofa, writing up Chapter 25 of her latest crime story.

Gljúfrasteinn, formerly the residence of Halldór Laxness, now a museum and cultural center, often houses readings during the darkest winter months. Sagenhaftes Island dropped in on one such reading.

Author Auður Jónsdóttir reads from an unpublished work, Kæra Auður Drauma, at her home in Reykjavík.

Always the same story

“It is the specialty of novelists to see the unique in every person”
Einar Kárason, author of Ofsi/Rage, winner of the Icelandic Literary Award 2008.

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir's “Crepusculum” opened at the Schirn Kunsthalle on September 28, and features eight ancient manuscripts from Iceland in an entirely new context.

The Guest of Honour Pavilion at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2011 will feature a video installation, showing Icelanders reading from their favourite books in their homes. Here is a short preview of what to expect.

“This edition is intended for readers,” says Kristof Magnusson of a new German translation of The Sagas of Icelanders, due out this fall with the publishing house S. Fischer Verlag.

“Working with the Icelandic manuscripts is like handling mummies from the British Museum,” says the artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir.

Roughly 70-80% of Iceland's annual book output is probably printed around this time of year,” says Jón Ómar Erlingsson, manager of the print company Oddi.

“My mother was a poor woman, who had nothing to give me but poetry – that was all she owned, all she had,” begins a passage by the poet Þorsteinn frá Hamri, included in Iceland's introductory film to the 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair.

“Much blood was spilled here on Haugsnes,” says farmer and former policeman Sigurður Hansen, who – using 450-pound boulders – has reconstructed the most monumental battle in Icelandic history.

In 1897, antiquarian and artist W. G. Collingwood set out on a journey of western Iceland. A century later, photographer Einar Falur Ingólfsson retraces the Victorian's footsteps.

Last June, a bi-national troupe of six writers, spoken-word artists and performers traveled around Iceland, seeking to be inspired by the country's landscapes and literary heritage.

“If people sense that you respect them and their culture, the possibilities are endless,” says photographer Páll Stefánsson of his newest book, Africa – The Future of Football.

"I'm just a shepherd who has lost his flock" says writer Jón Kalman Stefánsson. Although he has released two major novels in recent years – Himnaríki og Helvíti / Heaven and Hell and Harmur englanna / Sorrow of Angels – he remains adamantly silent on his current work-in-progress.

“I was a bit shaky when I was embroidering the first picture,” says artist Kristín Gunnlaugsdóttir, who recently showed new pictures in Reykjavík: not painted, but embroidered on coarse canvas.

Some of Iceland's priceless medieval manuscripts, stored in the Árni Magnússon Institute in Reykjavík, may be included in the Icelandic exhibition at the Frankfurt Book Fair next year.

Small delicate flowers in full size. The artitist's glorious flower pictures have recently been re-published.

Christmas doesn't just mean pretty lights, cake and feasting – but Christmas books!

"WHERE NOW IS THE RAIN SHOWER OF LIBERATION?"

Novelist and poet Einar Már Guðmundsson reads from his new book, Hvíta Bókin/The White Book, at Café Rosenberg in Reykjavík.

In September the band GusGus will be issuing its latest CD, 24/7. 

Birgir, Daníel and President Bongo talk to Þorsteinn J. about their new CD, and the five tracks, all much longer than the average pop song.

"Modernity arrived quite rapidly in Iceland, which called for a new facade," Says artist Elín Hansdóttir. Her exhibition casts a new, historical light on the current financial crisis in Iceland.

The Laxness Museum