Fringe Benefits: Icelandic Woes

Abstract

Iceland has recently moved to a more prominent place on the stage of world events, with the striking dislocation between the country’s industrial success and the catastrophic banking crash that virtually bankrupted the nation. An off-kilter vision of Iceland and its recent turbulent history may be seen through the work of such writers as Yrsa Sigurd¯ardóttir (previously mentioned), who is also a highly successful civil engineer in Reykjavík, with prestigious hydro construction projects under her belt (one might contrast Iceland’s recent industrial success with the banking crash). But different perspectives are provided by another Icelandic writer, Arnaldur Indrid¯ason, who won a prestigious CWA Dagger Award for his novel Silence of the Grave (2005 [2001]). Indrid¯ason is a novelist who foregrounds pronounced social concerns in his fiction, with his focus on the continuing influence of the Cold War. Remembering a time when idealistic left-wing students in Iceland would clamour to spend time studying in their admired communist East Germany, the novelist built into the mechanics of the police procedural an examination of Iceland’s past and the ideological disappointments — the socialist ideals that inspired people to do something about corruption in society, only to realise that corruption is not the exclusive preserve of capitalist bosses.