A lettert from Iceland

Magic in the Marsh

Wednesday 29th September 2004

It is disturbing, in a quite productive way, to be in a country where the language is a closed door to you. It starts at Heathrow where there is no obvious zone to check in for Icelandair. One does it at Aer Lingus. Of course.

Waiting at the departure gate I hear a story on the television of a Norwegian plane that has been boarded by a man with an axe, who has wounded several passengers and the pilot, not fatally. Strangers exchange glances, all thinking the same thing: airport security? Was it for this I lost my nail scissors on a flight to Stockport, I ask myself.

No mad axeman next to me on the plane but pleasant ex Special Needs teacher Neil, who shares his Times crossword with me. He and his wife are flying to Boston via Reykjavik and will not see anything of the land of ice.

But it’s mist and drizzle we land in and the temperature considerably colder than London, where my coat was just a nuisance to be carried. I am met by Thorunn (the ‘h’ is almost silent and the stress on the first syllable) who is also waiting for visitors from Finland and Norway, so I go and sit in the coach.

My friend Georgia Byng should also be arriving but I hear that her little son is ill in hospital and she is not in fact on that flight. The drive from the airport shows moors or heathland, covered with brown and green vegetation with flinty grey rocks poking through or tumbled about. Here and there a sort of cairn or a mini section of Stonehenge but whether unimaginably ancient or recently thrown together is not clear.

The sea is very close and has invaded the land at several points, making inlets or the marine equivalent of ox-bow lakes. When we get close to Reykjavik, there seem to be nothing but factories and suburban housing. I realise that this is not an old city at all.

We are dropped off at various points, myself and Tomi (from Finland) at a place called ‘A Room with a View”. There is no Reception but Thorunn finds Arni and he takes me up to the very top.

I have a huge penthouse apartment with a long balcony I can’t immediately use because of the pouring rain. There is a large living and dining room, all done in brown leather sofas and smoky glass tables, a well-equipped kitchen area, a double bedroom and a bathroom. Everywhere there are tea-lights in chunky glass holders like the ones I bought in Finland last year.

I unpack and find I have left my contact lens container at home. But a tea-light holder will come in handy. Calling home, I suddenly realise it is ten minutes before my lift to the reception and I am not changed. I get downstairs one minute late and there is not a soul about. The rain gets steadily on with the business of making me wet.

At last I manage to ring Arni on my mobile and he rescues me, driving me to the party, which is some way away. It turns out he has just bought City of Masks in Icelandic and is off to Venice tomorrow. He speaks perfect English, like all the Icelanders I have met.

The party is at The Writer’s House, the writer having been Gunnar Gunnarsson. It transpires that the coach went without me because Thorunn asked, “Is everybody here?” and of course “everybody” was and said so! I must take it up with Tomi. I meet Gro Kraft, with whom I have been in e-contact and it is pronounced “grew” not “grow” and she is a woman, not a man. And she is Danish not Icelandic. This keeps happening to me here; nothing turns out to be as expected.

I am like Sky in City of Flowers when he realises that “Nicholas Duke” is not who he seems and feels as if he is standing on an Escher staircase and doesn’t know which way is up and which down.

I meet Sigthrudur Gunnarsdóttir, my editor at Icelandic publishers, Mal og Menning. She gives me a copy of their translation of City of Masks (Grímuborgin). It has a goldish brown reproduction of a Venetian painting printed straight on to the binding, with a brown mask diagonally across the top third.

After the party I make sure to be on the coach back and talk to a Danish man who will be giving a talk on computer games as part of children’s culture. We try to work out together the rate of exchange between Icelandic Krona and pounds sterling, going via the Danish Krona and the Euro. We make it about 105 ISK to the £.

It is by now 9pm and I’ve had nothing to eat since some crackers and cream cheese on the plane, so I go to the coffee shop in the bookshop next to my apartment building and find all the food labelled only in Icelandic. But the waitress knows English and tells me that she can do a burrito with a “bean mixture” inside. Hooray – this vegetarian will not go hungry!

Thursday, 30th September

A weird dream in a broken night, that I was at a Society of Authors meeting, sitting next to Philip Pullman. Two rows in front of us, in a raked auditorium, is a fair-haired woman. Suddenly Philip stands up and says, “I must tell you that I have spotted that JKRowling has joined us”. A scatter of applause breaks out and the woman stands up, very annoyed and rushes from the room. “Philip” is embarrassed but I see that it is not him at all.

The water in my bath has a faintly sulphurous smell - perhaps it comes straight from a geyser? I manage to make tea with milk from the coffee shop of last night and then go shopping so that I can make breakfast. The day is still grey and cloudy.

“Sigga” calls for me at 10.45 and we go to the offices of “Frettabladid”, which = “newspaper”. On the way she tells me that I have got the exchange rate wrong; it should be about 130ISK to the £, so my meal last night was £7.50 rather than £10. Sigga is a fund of useful information. She is one of three daughters and has three daughters – that is just like me. Her youngest, just eleven, has read City of Masks in three days and loved it.

There is a teachers’ strike here, which has been going on for nearly two weeks and with no sign of a resolution. Because of this we can’t go to schools or have classes in. Tough on working mothers, I say. All mothers in Iceland are working mothers, says Sigga.

I am interviewed by Brynhildur Björnsdóttir, a redhead, who has read City of Masks in English. She asks if I have read any Icelandic children’s books in translation and my mind goes blank. But then it appears that there aren’t any! That’s a relief.

On the way back we pick up Sigga’s mother, Silja Athalsteinsdóttir, who is the country’s top children’s literature expert. It is in one way easy in Iceland to be the child of a well-known person, because the patronymic system means you can’t tell that they are related. But on the other hand, the population is so small that everyone knows who everyone else is anyway!

All boys have the surname meaning (father’s)son and all girls (father’s)daughter so a family with mother, father, son and daughter would all have different surnames. If Ingvar Magnusson, say, marries Halla Gunnarsdóttir, their son would be, say, Björn Ingvarsson, and their daughter Kristin Ingvarsdóttir. This system seems to me almost perfect – it would be ideal if girls were named after their mother, so that in the family I have invented, Kristin would be Hallasdóttir. (And Halla would have been named for her mother too). Where are the Icelandic feminists and what are they doing about it?

We go to Nordic House, where Silja is going to open the festival. I learn that it is called Magic in the Marsh, because it concentrates on fantasy literature and Nordic House (designed by Alvar Aalto) is built on a marsh. We have lunch in their coffee shop where you can eat soup and salad and homemade bread for 1000 ISK. I am discovering that everything costs about a thousand, no matter what it is. I see two white geese flying past the coffee shop window.

I meet more redheads (Silja says it comes from all the Irishwomen abducted by Vikings!). And some people have startling slate blue eyes, like the woman in Ibsen whose eyes changed with the waters of the fjord.

Most of the opening ceremony is in Icelandic. Two men sing - some jolly songs, like one to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” - some more sombre and skaldic. Arthur Slade (Canadian) reads from his book “Loki Wolf” in English.

I decide to take a taxi back to my part of town. (A thousand Krona, of course). But instead of going up to the flat, I walk along the Laugevegur and find a CD shop where I buy a disc for Stevie of an Icelandic opera which has won a prize. Then to a shop whose name means Happy Smiling Headgear, but can’t find hats that I think the girls will wear.

The Laugevegur is the main shopping street in Reykjavik, but is about the size of a High Street in a small British market town.

Just time for tea and toast before Sigga comes back to take me to the other newspaper office Morgunsbladid and an interview with Inga Maria Someonesdóttir By now it is raining again. The interview goes well and when the inevitable Harry Potter question comes up at the end I tell her about my dream. Does it mean that JK wants to be treated like all other children’s writers? Or that I want that?

After having my photograph taken in the rain outside, I run back to Sigga’s car and we drive to The Culture House for another reception (an Icelandic writer has won a prize while I have been being interviewed) and then a fascinating tour of the mediaeval manuscripts of Icelandic Eddas.

It is just round the corner from my flat so I hasten home in the rain and rather feebly buy a takeaway from the Chinese opposite. You can guess for how much. Outside the restaurant I meet Tomi who introduces his companion as his “latest girlfriend.” She looks like Björk, only saner, with straight black hair and elvish features. But presumably she is Finnish not Icelandic.

As I raise the first chopstickful of supper to my lips Sky News tells me the bombshell news from Downing Street: Tony Blair will have a minor heart operation, will not stand for a 4th term and has bought a £3.5m house in London! Don’t know which leaves me the most flabbergasted.

I shall have an early night and carry on reading Sarah Waters” Fingersmith, which gave me a big surprise this morning – the first novel to do so since I don’t know when.

Friday 1st October

Read far too late and slept badly again but feel quite human after a sulphurous shower and hair wash. And manage to see most of the Bush/Kerry debate on CNN. Kerry makes an unexpectedly good job of it. But is it too late?

It is still grey and rainy this morning. I wonder if Georgia got here all right yesterday. She wasn’t at the party but was due to give one of her readings in the evening. And has another this morning, so perhaps I will see her when I go in for mine later. It must be ghastly to be away from your child when he is sick. I hope she’ll stay for the sightseeing tour on Sunday.

I start my story for the website, to act as a trailer for City of Flowers, and then call for a taxi to Nordic House, because the rain still comes down. This time I do not tip the driver; Sigga has told me that it is not the custom here. I am to read first at my session, so I introduce the characters and read the passage near the beginning where Lucien first meets Rodolfo in his laboratory.

There are many teenagers there but no time for questions, even though they seem to understand English. After Sigga has read the same passage in Icelandic, we have a Faroese author who reads from her book. I sit and listen uncomprehendingly and then it is read in Icelandic, which is also opaque to me.

A nice red-head, Kristin Helga Gunnarsdóttir, then reads from her book. She stamps her foot and does the dialogue in different voices, but it is no good. All is a mystery. Straight after the session I do a radio interview in a room off the library and then get some lunch in the coffee shop with Sigga, Silja and Kristin Helga. It turns out that Georgia is already on her way back to England, having done her two sessions, so I shan’t see her after all. Shame.

The programme is overrunning so I don’t need to hurry. I meet a Danish author with a perfect English accent, Lene Kaaberbol, who had her first book published when she was fifteen. Instant rapport. I go in to catch the last segment of the next session, which is a talk in English about the new life of fairy tales and legends in contemporary comics.

Then it is time for our “conversation” chaired by Dagny Krystjansdóttir, It is cut down to half an hour, so it is no problem and seems to go down well. Then we all have to hasten to the reception given at the Canadian Embassy.

I get in a huddle with nice German, Knister (he has only one name), who was also on the panel. He has written about 30 books and has sold 7m copies! But has no publisher in the UK or US. He is very pleased that we have the same German publisher and promises to send me their catalogue with City of Masks on the front.

Tomi turns up with his girlfriend; she is really stunning tonight, her skin ice white and her hair so black it must be dyed. A size 8 at most in a damson-coloured dress block printed at the edges with a cream pattern.

It is very hot in the embassy and after an hour I have had enough. I walk back to my apartment, seeing some of old Reykjavik at last. For dinner I go round the corner to a vegetarian restaurant whose name is “One Woman.” There are three dishes, all served with brown rice and salad, and you can help yourself to bread so dark it looks like chocolate cake, and hoummus.

I take Fingersmith, with me, read it all through the meal, back at the flat and in bed till I finish it – it has been that gripping. But at 11.30pm when I am about to fall asleep, I hear the sound of footsteps walking up and down. Peeping through my bedroom curtain I see a figure on my balcony! It is looking out over the harbour and walks up and down a bit longer.

At first this is terrifying but reason prevails. A burglar would surely be more interested in the flat than the view! Checking from the living room window, I realise that there must be another door to the balcony on the right, even though my windows take up most of the length of it. It must have been someone from the apartment next door.

But assuming that the balcony was just mine, I have been getting dressed and undressed with the curtains wide open, because the building is not overlooked at that side. I shall have to become discreet. Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t phone anyone up and babble about intruders.

Saturday 2nd October

Stepping on to the balcony after breakfast I see three huge raptors wheeling in the sky; could they be eagles?

I spend the morning shopping for postcards and presents and end up having lunch in the bookshop. They have no phrasebooks or grammars of Icelandic in English – only some huge dictionaries.

The weather is the best we’ve had so far, so I walk to Nordic House. I’m supposed to be doing some booksigning and do indeed sign a few copies. No-one else seems to. Then we have our last session, in which five of us read. This time I chose the passage in which Lucien and Rodolfo make fireworks. But the readings in Icelandic and one in first Swedish and then Icelandic are quite exhausting for me. I am very glad to retreat into the cafe for a cup of tea.

I sit with Patrice Kindl (USA), who has read from her book, “The Woman in the Walls.” It is magic realism, about a girl who tends not to be seen and ends up building a parallel home inside the walls of her house. Very appealing. She has a wonderful umbrella, with roses stitched round the rim.

Then it is time for the end of festival party. Each of the writers has been presented with a book about trolls and now we are having strawberries, chocolates and white wine. Patrice agrees to open her umbrella with the roses and I take a photo. Knister comes and nudges me. “Tomi is still with the same girl,” he says. Her name is Kaisu and it turns out she is still at school!

Arthur Slade (Canada) puts it about that it is Knister who is responsible for all the broken glass about on the streets in Reykjavik today. There has been a Beer Festival the night before. But it turns out K couldn’t find anyone to go with and went soberly home. Lene is off to Canada tomorrow for a festival in Toronto. It turns out there are children’s literature festivals everywhere. I shall make it my aim to go to each of them at least once.

Sigga takes me and an Icelandic writer-illustrator out to dinner. Her husband, Björn, joins us too and we go to an Indian restaurant, which is very nice. I’m still trying to sort out Icelandic names and they confuse me by saying that a child CAN take his or her mother’s name and sometimes both! And about 10% of Icelanders have a “family name” not ending in –son or -dóttir. Will I ever understand?

But Icelandic parental employment leave is exemplary. The father must take three months, the mother three months and another three months can be divided up between them as they like. All this on 80% pay.

We say our farewells – I shall miss Sigga – and I walk back to my apartment. It is raining again. I hope it gets it out of its system before tomorrow, We are being collected at 8.30am.

Sunday 3rd October

What a dreadful night! Reykjavik’s nightlife, i.e. loud music and associated drinking, goes on till 6am and, even though my flat is not on the street side, it is enough to keep waking me. I wish I’d brought my earplugs. Eventually it is 7am and I dare not risk falling into a heavy sleep, so get up and shower.

There are several coaches in Laugevegur – Sunday is evidently tour day – but I see Kristin and manage to get on the right one. The Bookshop plate glass window has been smashed by Saturday night revellers. On the way to Haldor Laxness’ house, someone gets a call to say that two people haven’t been picked up!

At this point the sun is shining and there is more blue sky than I have seen since I got here. I sit next to Idunn Steinsdóttir, who is Kristin’s sister.

Haldor Laxness (1902-1997) had his first book published when he was seventeen and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. He promptly bought a Rolls Royce and had a swimming pool added to the house we are visiting. He lived there with his wife and it is as they left it.

They had separate bedrooms, with very narrow hard-looking beds, on either side of his study. All the books are upstairs; there are none downstairs in the living-room or dining-room. We all have to wear overshoes and check all cameras and handbags in at the ticket desk; no photography allowed inside what is kept as a shrine to Iceland’s most famous author.

He wrote semi-standing at a lectern-desk, in pencil. And then his wife typed it up – one novel as many as six times! She said, “It makes a welcome break from housework.” Every room has large picture windows with a fabulous view and there is a fast-flowing stream at the back. It feels in the middle of nowhere.

They liked to entertain and acted as a centre for writers and artists but the house feels spartan, even though Laxness was a snappy dresser, wearing bespoke suits and always a tie (there are some on a stand in his bedroom, but they are all very dull, with diagonal stripes).

By the time we emerge, the weather has changed and it is raining again. Now we drive to a multi-media visitors’ centre, where a big screen tells us about the history of the Icelandic parliament. And then on to Thingvellir itself. There was an assembly here for nine hundred years. It was here, in 1000 AD, that the decision was taken to adopt Christianity as the national religion.

It was an unusually bloodless coup, with those who favoured the heathen way of life allowed to worship the old gods in private. And eat horsemeat. We see lots of Icelandic horses, in a variety of earth colours, small and shaggy. There are officially 75,000 of them in the country. Oh, and 75,000 cows too but only 200 goats.

At Thingvellir the wind is absolutely fearsome and my ears are paralysed. I can’t imagine how the Lawspeakers made themselves heard. We are glad to get back in the coach and I have visions of cups of coffee but that’s what they remain. Next stop is the Geysir, where I wear a knitted ear warmer lent by Idunn. The sprays of hot air and water come at irregular intervals but never make a big plume, because the wind whips them sideways. We are nearly blown off our feet too.

This where we stop for lunch however, at the Geysir Hotel and we are soon stripping off jackets, warmed by our hot soup. Knister is very keen to have a photo taken with me so that he can show it to his editor at Arena, who he says is a big fan of Stravaganza. There is time afterwards to nip into the shop, where I buy an Icelandic wool hat. It is such a boon, as the next stop in Gullfoss, the dramatic waterfalls whose spray can be felt as soon as we step out of the coach.

There is no sign of the “permanent” rainbow you see over Gullfoss in the postcards, even though the sun does come out briefly to shine through the spray. We drive next to South Iceland’s cathedral, standing in the middle of just as much nowhere as Laxness’ house. It was built in the sixties with money from all the churches in the diocese and has a quiet stark grace.

One last stop – at a crater with blue green water at the bottom. Tomi and Kaisu climb down to a lower level of rocks so that he can photograph her against that background. One false step and it would be a case of “My Last Duchess.” As we re-enter Reyjavik later, a plan is mooted to meet at a coffee house at 7.30 for a last drink or meal, but I’m too knackered to make it. All this lack of sleep is catching up with me and I really don’t want another meal.

Funny – I thought all Icelandic cuisine was going to be seafood, game and rotted puffin meat but I’ve actually managed to eat more than enough. Fruit and yoghurt with all the tea-lights lit and Animal Planet on the TV is much more appealing.

Monday 4th October

It was a wild and stormy night. Woke at 5am to the lashing of rain on the roof and the same crazy wind that we had in the countryside yesterday. My plan to visit the Saga museum has been revised; it would be crazy to go out in this storm. So I have plenty of time to pack and tidy up and take some farewell pictures of my flat. It has been very comfortable and I’ll just have to come again, bringing Stevie next time.

I’m down outside the flat at 12.25 where I’m met by a silver-haired man who starts talking to me in Icelandic. But he is my driver and we wait a long time for Patrice and her husband Paul. Eventually we give up and drive to the bus station but I have missed the airport bus and there isn’t another for three-quarters of an hour. So I have a rather horrid salad – they put pineapple in the cole slaw!


At the airport, I meet Patrice. They jumped on a Flybus early and caught the bus I missed! And they had quite a nice lunch. But Patrice is very apologetic. In the end I have to run for the plane. The flight is uneventful, apart from the fact there is no vegetarian meal for me, in spite of its having been ordered by me and Thorunn.

I get a bus really easily to Oxford and am met by Stevie. My Icelandic adventure is over.















A letter from Iceland

Magic in the Marsh

Wednesday 29th September 2004

It is disturbing, in a quite productive way, to be in a country where the language is a closed door to you. It starts at Heathrow where there is no obvious zone to check in for Icelandair. One does it at Aer Lingus. Of course.

Waiting at the departure gate I hear a story on the television of a Norwegian plane that has been boarded by a man with an axe, who has wounded several passengers and the pilot, not fatally. Strangers exchange glances, all thinking the same thing: airport security? Was it for this I lost my nail scissors on a flight to Stockport, I ask myself.

No mad axeman next to me on the plane but pleasant ex Special Needs teacher Neil, who shares his Times crossword with me. He and his wife are flying to Boston via Reykjavik and will not see anything of the land of ice.

But it’s mist and drizzle we land in and the temperature considerably colder than London, where my coat was just a nuisance to be carried. I am met by Thorunn (the ‘h’ is almost silent and the stress on the first syllable) who is also waiting for visitors from Finland and Norway, so I go and sit in the coach.

My friend Georgia Byng should also be arriving but I hear that her little son is ill in hospital and she is not in fact on that flight. The drive from the airport shows moors or heathland, covered with brown and green vegetation with flinty grey rocks poking through or tumbled about. Here and there a sort of cairn or a mini section of Stonehenge but whether unimaginably ancient or recently thrown together is not clear.

The sea is very close and has invaded the land at several points, making inlets or the marine equivalent of ox-bow lakes. When we get close to Reykjavik, there seem to be nothing but factories and suburban housing. I realise that this is not an old city at all.

We are dropped off at various points, myself and Tomi (from Finland) at a place called ‘A Room with a View”. There is no Reception but Thorunn finds Arni and he takes me up to the very top.

I have a huge penthouse apartment with a long balcony I can’t immediately use because of the pouring rain. There is a large living and dining room, all done in brown leather sofas and smoky glass tables, a well-equipped kitchen area, a double bedroom and a bathroom. Everywhere there are tea-lights in chunky glass holders like the ones I bought in Finland last year.

I unpack and find I have left my contact lens container at home. But a tea-light holder will come in handy. Calling home, I suddenly realise it is ten minutes before my lift to the reception and I am not changed. I get downstairs one minute late and there is not a soul about. The rain gets steadily on with the business of making me wet.

At last I manage to ring Arni on my mobile and he rescues me, driving me to the party, which is some way away. It turns out he has just bought City of Masks in Icelandic and is off to Venice tomorrow. He speaks perfect English, like all the Icelanders I have met.

The party is at The Writer’s House, the writer having been Gunnar Gunnarsson. It transpires that the coach went without me because Thorunn asked, “Is everybody here?” and of course “everybody” was and said so! I must take it up with Tomi. I meet Gro Kraft, with whom I have been in e-contact and it is pronounced “grew” not “grow” and she is a woman, not a man. And she is Danish not Icelandic. This keeps happening to me here; nothing turns out to be as expected.

I am like Sky in City of Flowers when he realises that “Nicholas Duke” is not who he seems and feels as if he is standing on an Escher staircase and doesn’t know which way is up and which down.

I meet Sigthrudur Gunnarsdóttir, my editor at Icelandic publishers, Mal og Menning. She gives me a copy of their translation of City of Masks (Grímuborgin). It has a goldish brown reproduction of a Venetian painting printed straight on to the binding, with a brown mask diagonally across the top third.

After the party I make sure to be on the coach back and talk to a Danish man who will be giving a talk on computer games as part of children’s culture. We try to work out together the rate of exchange between Icelandic Krona and pounds sterling, going via the Danish Krona and the Euro. We make it about 105 ISK to the £.

It is by now 9pm and I’ve had nothing to eat since some crackers and cream cheese on the plane, so I go to the coffee shop in the bookshop next to my apartment building and find all the food labelled only in Icelandic. But the waitress knows English and tells me that she can do a burrito with a “bean mixture” inside. Hooray – this vegetarian will not go hungry!

Thursday, 30th September

A weird dream in a broken night, that I was at a Society of Authors meeting, sitting next to Philip Pullman. Two rows in front of us, in a raked auditorium, is a fair-haired woman. Suddenly Philip stands up and says, “I must tell you that I have spotted that JKRowling has joined us”. A scatter of applause breaks out and the woman stands up, very annoyed and rushes from the room. “Philip” is embarrassed but I see that it is not him at all.

The water in my bath has a faintly sulphurous smell - perhaps it comes straight from a geyser? I manage to make tea with milk from the coffee shop of last night and then go shopping so that I can make breakfast. The day is still grey and cloudy.

“Sigga” calls for me at 10.45 and we go to the offices of “Frettabladid”, which = “newspaper”. On the way she tells me that I have got the exchange rate wrong; it should be about 130ISK to the £, so my meal last night was £7.50 rather than £10. Sigga is a fund of useful information. She is one of three daughters and has three daughters – that is just like me. Her youngest, just eleven, has read City of Masks in three days and loved it.

There is a teachers’ strike here, which has been going on for nearly two weeks and with no sign of a resolution. Because of this we can’t go to schools or have classes in. Tough on working mothers, I say. All mothers in Iceland are working mothers, says Sigga.

I am interviewed by Brynhildur Björnsdóttir, a redhead, who has read City of Masks in English. She asks if I have read any Icelandic children’s books in translation and my mind goes blank. But then it appears that there aren’t any! That’s a relief.

On the way back we pick up Sigga’s mother, Silja Athalsteinsdóttir, who is the country’s top children’s literature expert. It is in one way easy in Iceland to be the child of a well-known person, because the patronymic system means you can’t tell that they are related. But on the other hand, the population is so small that everyone knows who everyone else is anyway!

All boys have the surname meaning (father’s)son and all girls (father’s)daughter so a family with mother, father, son and daughter would all have different surnames. If Ingvar Magnusson, say, marries Halla Gunnarsdóttir, their son would be, say, Björn Ingvarsson, and their daughter Kristin Ingvarsdóttir. This system seems to me almost perfect – it would be ideal if girls were named after their mother, so that in the family I have invented, Kristin would be Hallasdóttir. (And Halla would have been named for her mother too). Where are the Icelandic feminists and what are they doing about it?

We go to Nordic House, where Silja is going to open the festival. I learn that it is called Magic in the Marsh, because it concentrates on fantasy literature and Nordic House (designed by Alvar Aalto) is built on a marsh. We have lunch in their coffee shop where you can eat soup and salad and homemade bread for 1000 ISK. I am discovering that everything costs about a thousand, no matter what it is. I see two white geese flying past the coffee shop window.

I meet more redheads (Silja says it comes from all the Irishwomen abducted by Vikings!). And some people have startling slate blue eyes, like the woman in Ibsen whose eyes changed with the waters of the fjord.

Most of the opening ceremony is in Icelandic. Two men sing - some jolly songs, like one to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” - some more sombre and skaldic. Arthur Slade (Canadian) reads from his book “Loki Wolf” in English.

I decide to take a taxi back to my part of town. (A thousand Krona, of course). But instead of going up to the flat, I walk along the Laugevegur and find a CD shop where I buy a disc for Stevie of an Icelandic opera which has won a prize. Then to a shop whose name means Happy Smiling Headgear, but can’t find hats that I think the girls will wear.

The Laugevegur is the main shopping street in Reykjavik, but is about the size of a High Street in a small British market town.

Just time for tea and toast before Sigga comes back to take me to the other newspaper office Morgunsbladid and an interview with Inga Maria Someonesdóttir By now it is raining again. The interview goes well and when the inevitable Harry Potter question comes up at the end I tell her about my dream. Does it mean that JK wants to be treated like all other children’s writers? Or that I want that?

After having my photograph taken in the rain outside, I run back to Sigga’s car and we drive to The Culture House for another reception (an Icelandic writer has won a prize while I have been being interviewed) and then a fascinating tour of the mediaeval manuscripts of Icelandic Eddas.

It is just round the corner from my flat so I hasten home in the rain and rather feebly buy a takeaway from the Chinese opposite. You can guess for how much. Outside the restaurant I meet Tomi who introduces his companion as his “latest girlfriend.” She looks like Björk, only saner, with straight black hair and elvish features. But presumably she is Finnish not Icelandic.

As I raise the first chopstickful of supper to my lips Sky News tells me the bombshell news from Downing Street: Tony Blair will have a minor heart operation, will not stand for a 4th term and has bought a £3.5m house in London! Don’t know which leaves me the most flabbergasted.

I shall have an early night and carry on reading Sarah Waters” Fingersmith, which gave me a big surprise this morning – the first novel to do so since I don’t know when.

Friday 1st October

Read far too late and slept badly again but feel quite human after a sulphurous shower and hair wash. And manage to see most of the Bush/Kerry debate on CNN. Kerry makes an unexpectedly good job of it. But is it too late?

It is still grey and rainy this morning. I wonder if Georgia got here all right yesterday. She wasn’t at the party but was due to give one of her readings in the evening. And has another this morning, so perhaps I will see her when I go in for mine later. It must be ghastly to be away from your child when he is sick. I hope she’ll stay for the sightseeing tour on Sunday.

I start my story for the website, to act as a trailer for City of Flowers, and then call for a taxi to Nordic House, because the rain still comes down. This time I do not tip the driver; Sigga has told me that it is not the custom here. I am to read first at my session, so I introduce the characters and read the passage near the beginning where Lucien first meets Rodolfo in his laboratory.

There are many teenagers there but no time for questions, even though they seem to understand English. After Sigga has read the same passage in Icelandic, we have a Faroese author who reads from her book. I sit and listen uncomprehendingly and then it is read in Icelandic, which is also opaque to me.

A nice red-head, Kristin Helga Gunnarsdóttir, then reads from her book. She stamps her foot and does the dialogue in different voices, but it is no good. All is a mystery. Straight after the session I do a radio interview in a room off the library and then get some lunch in the coffee shop with Sigga, Silja and Kristin Helga. It turns out that Georgia is already on her way back to England, having done her two sessions, so I shan’t see her after all. Shame.

The programme is overrunning so I don’t need to hurry. I meet a Danish author with a perfect English accent, Lene Kaaberbol, who had her first book published when she was fifteen. Instant rapport. I go in to catch the last segment of the next session, which is a talk in English about the new life of fairy tales and legends in contemporary comics.

Then it is time for our “conversation” chaired by Dagny Krystjansdóttir, It is cut down to half an hour, so it is no problem and seems to go down well. Then we all have to hasten to the reception given at the Canadian Embassy.

I get in a huddle with nice German, Knister (he has only one name), who was also on the panel. He has written about 30 books and has sold 7m copies! But has no publisher in the UK or US. He is very pleased that we have the same German publisher and promises to send me their catalogue with City of Masks on the front.

Tomi turns up with his girlfriend; she is really stunning tonight, her skin ice white and her hair so black it must be dyed. A size 8 at most in a damson-coloured dress block printed at the edges with a cream pattern.

It is very hot in the embassy and after an hour I have had enough. I walk back to my apartment, seeing some of old Reykjavik at last. For dinner I go round the corner to a vegetarian restaurant whose name is “One Woman.” There are three dishes, all served with brown rice and salad, and you can help yourself to bread so dark it looks like chocolate cake, and hoummus.

I take Fingersmith, with me, read it all through the meal, back at the flat and in bed till I finish it – it has been that gripping. But at 11.30pm when I am about to fall asleep, I hear the sound of footsteps walking up and down. Peeping through my bedroom curtain I see a figure on my balcony! It is looking out over the harbour and walks up and down a bit longer.

At first this is terrifying but reason prevails. A burglar would surely be more interested in the flat than the view! Checking from the living room window, I realise that there must be another door to the balcony on the right, even though my windows take up most of the length of it. It must have been someone from the apartment next door.

But assuming that the balcony was just mine, I have been getting dressed and undressed with the curtains wide open, because the building is not overlooked at that side. I shall have to become discreet. Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t phone anyone up and babble about intruders.

Saturday 2nd October

Stepping on to the balcony after breakfast I see three huge raptors wheeling in the sky; could they be eagles?

I spend the morning shopping for postcards and presents and end up having lunch in the bookshop. They have no phrasebooks or grammars of Icelandic in English – only some huge dictionaries.

The weather is the best we’ve had so far, so I walk to Nordic House. I’m supposed to be doing some booksigning and do indeed sign a few copies. No-one else seems to. Then we have our last session, in which five of us read. This time I chose the passage in which Lucien and Rodolfo make fireworks. But the readings in Icelandic and one in first Swedish and then Icelandic are quite exhausting for me. I am very glad to retreat into the cafe for a cup of tea.

I sit with Patrice Kindl (USA), who has read from her book, “The Woman in the Walls.” It is magic realism, about a girl who tends not to be seen and ends up building a parallel home inside the walls of her house. Very appealing. She has a wonderful umbrella, with roses stitched round the rim.

Then it is time for the end of festival party. Each of the writers has been presented with a book about trolls and now we are having strawberries, chocolates and white wine. Patrice agrees to open her umbrella with the roses and I take a photo. Knister comes and nudges me. “Tomi is still with the same girl,” he says. Her name is Kaisu and it turns out she is still at school!

Arthur Slade (Canada) puts it about that it is Knister who is responsible for all the broken glass about on the streets in Reykjavik today. There has been a Beer Festival the night before. But it turns out K couldn’t find anyone to go with and went soberly home. Lene is off to Canada tomorrow for a festival in Toronto. It turns out there are children’s literature festivals everywhere. I shall make it my aim to go to each of them at least once.

Sigga takes me and an Icelandic writer-illustrator out to dinner. Her husband, Björn, joins us too and we go to an Indian restaurant, which is very nice. I’m still trying to sort out Icelandic names and they confuse me by saying that a child CAN take his or her mother’s name and sometimes both! And about 10% of Icelanders have a “family name” not ending in –son or -dóttir. Will I ever understand?

But Icelandic parental employment leave is exemplary. The father must take three months, the mother three months and another three months can be divided up between them as they like. All this on 80% pay.

We say our farewells – I shall miss Sigga – and I walk back to my apartment. It is raining again. I hope it gets it out of its system before tomorrow, We are being collected at 8.30am.

Sunday 3rd October

What a dreadful night! Reykjavik’s nightlife, i.e. loud music and associated drinking, goes on till 6am and, even though my flat is not on the street side, it is enough to keep waking me. I wish I’d brought my earplugs. Eventually it is 7am and I dare not risk falling into a heavy sleep, so get up and shower.

There are several coaches in Laugevegur – Sunday is evidently tour day – but I see Kristin and manage to get on the right one. The Bookshop plate glass window has been smashed by Saturday night revellers. On the way to Haldor Laxness’ house, someone gets a call to say that two people haven’t been picked up!

At this point the sun is shining and there is more blue sky than I have seen since I got here. I sit next to Idunn Steinsdóttir, who is Kristin’s sister.

Haldor Laxness (1902-1997) had his first book published when he was seventeen and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. He promptly bought a Rolls Royce and had a swimming pool added to the house we are visiting. He lived there with his wife and it is as they left it.

They had separate bedrooms, with very narrow hard-looking beds, on either side of his study. All the books are upstairs; there are none downstairs in the living-room or dining-room. We all have to wear overshoes and check all cameras and handbags in at the ticket desk; no photography allowed inside what is kept as a shrine to Iceland’s most famous author.

He wrote semi-standing at a lectern-desk, in pencil. And then his wife typed it up – one novel as many as six times! She said, “It makes a welcome break from housework.” Every room has large picture windows with a fabulous view and there is a fast-flowing stream at the back. It feels in the middle of nowhere.

They liked to entertain and acted as a centre for writers and artists but the house feels spartan, even though Laxness was a snappy dresser, wearing bespoke suits and always a tie (there are some on a stand in his bedroom, but they are all very dull, with diagonal stripes).

By the time we emerge, the weather has changed and it is raining again. Now we drive to a multi-media visitors’ centre, where a big screen tells us about the history of the Icelandic parliament. And then on to Thingvellir itself. There was an assembly here for nine hundred years. It was here, in 1000 AD, that the decision was taken to adopt Christianity as the national religion.

It was an unusually bloodless coup, with those who favoured the heathen way of life allowed to worship the old gods in private. And eat horsemeat. We see lots of Icelandic horses, in a variety of earth colours, small and shaggy. There are officially 75,000 of them in the country. Oh, and 75,000 cows too but only 200 goats.

At Thingvellir the wind is absolutely fearsome and my ears are paralysed. I can’t imagine how the Lawspeakers made themselves heard. We are glad to get back in the coach and I have visions of cups of coffee but that’s what they remain. Next stop is the Geysir, where I wear a knitted ear warmer lent by Idunn. The sprays of hot air and water come at irregular intervals but never make a big plume, because the wind whips them sideways. We are nearly blown off our feet too.

This where we stop for lunch however, at the Geysir Hotel and we are soon stripping off jackets, warmed by our hot soup. Knister is very keen to have a photo taken with me so that he can show it to his editor at Arena, who he says is a big fan of Stravaganza. There is time afterwards to nip into the shop, where I buy an Icelandic wool hat. It is such a boon, as the next stop in Gullfoss, the dramatic waterfalls whose spray can be felt as soon as we step out of the coach.

There is no sign of the “permanent” rainbow you see over Gullfoss in the postcards, even though the sun does come out briefly to shine through the spray. We drive next to South Iceland’s cathedral, standing in the middle of just as much nowhere as Laxness’ house. It was built in the sixties with money from all the churches in the diocese and has a quiet stark grace.

One last stop – at a crater with blue green water at the bottom. Tomi and Kaisu climb down to a lower level of rocks so that he can photograph her against that background. One false step and it would be a case of “My Last Duchess.” As we re-enter Reyjavik later, a plan is mooted to meet at a coffee house at 7.30 for a last drink or meal, but I’m too knackered to make it. All this lack of sleep is catching up with me and I really don’t want another meal.

Funny – I thought all Icelandic cuisine was going to be seafood, game and rotted puffin meat but I’ve actually managed to eat more than enough. Fruit and yoghurt with all the tea-lights lit and Animal Planet on the TV is much more appealing.

Monday 4th October

It was a wild and stormy night. Woke at 5am to the lashing of rain on the roof and the same crazy wind that we had in the countryside yesterday. My plan to visit the Saga museum has been revised; it would be crazy to go out in this storm. So I have plenty of time to pack and tidy up and take some farewell pictures of my flat. It has been very comfortable and I’ll just have to come again, bringing Stevie next time.

I’m down outside the flat at 12.25 where I’m met by a silver-haired man who starts talking to me in Icelandic. But he is my driver and we wait a long time for Patrice and her husband Paul. Eventually we give up and drive to the bus station but I have missed the airport bus and there isn’t another for three-quarters of an hour. So I have a rather horrid salad – they put pineapple in the cole slaw!


At the airport, I meet Patrice. They jumped on a Flybus early and caught the bus I missed! And they had quite a nice lunch. But Patrice is very apologetic. In the end I have to run for the plane. The flight is uneventful, apart from the fact there is no vegetarian meal for me, in spite of its having been ordered by me and Thorunn.

I get a bus really easily to Oxford and am met by Stevie. My Icelandic adventure is over.