Names for the sea
Subtitle: strangers in Iceland
By: Sarah Moss
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 358
ISBN-13: 9781619021228
Subjects: Social life and customs; Homes and haunts; Description and travel; Family; Anecdotes; Travel writing
Other titles: Strangers in Iceland
Description: Novelist Sarah Moss had a childhood dream of moving to Iceland, sustained by a wild summer there when she was nineteen. In 2009, she saw an advertisement for a job at the University of Iceland and applied on a whim, despite having two young children and a comfortable life in an English cathedral city. The resulting adventure was shaped by Iceland's economic collapse, which halved the value of her salary, by the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull and by a collection of new friends, including a poet who saw the only bombs fall on Iceland in 1943, a woman who speaks to elves and a chef who guided Sarah's family around the intricacies of Icelandic cuisine. Sarah was drawn to the strangeness of Icelandic landscape, and explored hillsides of boiling mud, volcanic craters and fissures, and the unsurfaced roads that link remote farms and fishing villages in the far north. She walked the coast path every night after her children were in bed, watching the northern lights and the comings and goings of migratory birds. As the weeks and months went by, the children settled in local schools and Sarah got to know her students and colleagues, she and her family learned new ways to live.
Notes: "First published in Great Britain by Granta Books 2012"--T.p. verso.
Table of contents: title: Iceland first seen; title: Leave of absence; title: Vestmannaeyjar; title: Back to school; title: Pétur's saga; title: Winter; title: The icesave thing; title: Spring; title: Eyjafjallajökull; title: Vilborg; title: The hidden people; title: A small farm under a crag; title: In search of the Kreppa; title: Knitting and shame; title: Last weekend; title: Beautiful is the hillside.