Ex Libris Kirkland

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Subtitle Strangers in Iceland
First Written 2010
Genre Travel
Origin Iceland
Publisher Counterpoint
ISBN-10 1619021226
ISBN-13 978-1619021228
My Copy library paperback
First Read February 26, 2017

Names for the Sea



I recognize my own distrust of Icelandic tourism, of the collector's desire to tick off geysers and volcanoes and midnight sun on some kind of Lonely Planet checklist, totting up experiences like any other commodity. There must be a better reason to travel, a better way of travelling, than the hoarding of sights your friends haven't seen.

Quoted on March 1, 2017

[A student writing about some Icelandic artifact] A French story, told in an Icelandic way by an Icelandic craftsman, because even then we knew what was happening in Europe but we did things our own way. Everyone nods and murmurs agreement. Yes, says Rosa, I liked the carvings from the eighteenth-century church. If you think of St. Paul's in London or of course the churches of Venice from the time, these are nothing, they are the scribbles of a young child. But they are not made to intimidate. They are to please, not to make you feel small, and these were buildings to hold perhaps four or five families from the valley when they could come together. No great nobleman paid and no great artist was commissioned, and in a way I am proud of this.

Quoted on March 1, 2017

[On watching Icelandic cinema] I am fascinated, mostly by the landscape, but I have no idea what the narrative logic might be. The subtitles are little help because there seems to be no relationship between what people say (not much, mostly about farming) and what they do (mostly farming but sometimes murder).

Quoted on March 1, 2017

Every Icelandic girl, the students tell me, has to make at least one Icelandic sweater. It's a rite of passage, a step on the road to full Icelandic status.

Quoted on March 1, 2017

When we come to the checkout I find that I still can't say the Icelandic words I have in my head, and still can't bear the arrogance of asking people to speak English for me, and still, therefore, mutter and smile as if I had no language at all.

Quoted on March 1, 2017

We go up the hills toward the paddle-steamer building, which turns out to be the Library of Water. So many people have told me that I must see this that I'm predisposed not to like it. It's some kind of avant-garde art installation, I gather, with a writing residency attached.

Quoted on March 1, 2017

Iceland was not, as it first appeared, a simpler place than England. Iceland had complexities so subtle that their existence is invisible to an inattentive foreigner. One of the Icelandic cliches about Icelanders is that, by foreign standards (as if 'foreigners' had one standard), they are rude. There is no word for 'please' in Icelandic. 'Thank you' and 'sorry' are used much less than in British and American English. Nevertheless, it has been clear to me from the beginning that Iceland is a place where the most intricate and important things are unarticulated, partly because intricacy doesn't need to be spelt out in a place where everyone has always known how things are done, and partly because it is unIcelandic to explain yourself. Self-explanation suggests some entitlement on the part of your audience to know your interior life. Icelandic driver's don't indicate [use their turn signals], because they don't see why anyone else needs to know where they're going.

Quoted on March 1, 2017


Ex Libris Kirkland is a super-self-absorbed reading journal made by Matt Kirkland. Copyright © 2001 - .
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