Nobody knows Iceland like Lonely Planet. With our 7th edition you’ll discover the otherworldly beauty of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, chat with locals while bathing in Myvatn’s geothermal pool, walk over lava fields and past glaciers on the Landmannalaugar to porsmork hike and indulge in gourmet Icelandic cuisine in Reykjavik’s top-class restaurants. Lonely Planet guides are written by experts who get to the heart of every destination they visit. This fully updated edition is packed with accurate, practical and honest advice, designed to give you the information you need to make the most of your trip.
Exotic, yet conveniently close, Iceland attracts a majority of visitors from North America and the rest of Europe. With its colossal glaciers, vast lava flows and thundering waterfalls, the country’s primordial landscape awards visitors with unforgettable vistas and incredible trekking beneath the glowing northern lights. Whether you’re an outdoor enthusiast, an independent traveler on a budget, or a comfort-seeking tourist, author Andrew Evans shows you how to do it – ‘Icelander’ style – at this trendy, eco-friendly destination.
The Icelandic Vikings, according to Byock, professor of Old Norse and Medieval Scandinavian at UCLA, were far more than fur-clad, flea-bitten, mead-swilling raiders, as legend would have them. In this survey of their surprisingly complex society, spanning the three centuries from the island’s settlement to 1260 when the king of Norway took control of it, Byock shows the Icelanders as a strong-willed and legally minded people who managed to carve a living as farmers out of an inhospitable environment while creating a remarkably modern free state governed by powerful laws and notions of honor instead of warlords and kings. He introduces readers to the Icelandic economy, social life (especially blood feuds) and home and family life, including a wonderful illustrated appendix on construction using turf. While this book will appeal to some readers of popular social surveys, in particular The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D, by James Reston Jr., Byock’s tone is generally academic and so more similar to that of, say, Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, by James Davidson. Byock’s approach to his material also threatens an academic dust-up. He defies historiographical convention, but not without good and well-stated reason, by mining the Icelandic sagas for historical truths. Some may consider this approach akin to mining Cheever for truths about the lives of 20th-century suburbanites, but he certainly puts those facts he finds to cogent use. Illus.
Experience Iceland’s amazing diversity and many attractions the way the locals do with America’s #1 bestselling travel series. Frommer’s Iceland is a complete guide to everything Iceland has to offer, from cosmopolitan city Reykjavik to outdoor activities like taking a dip in natural thermal pools. No matter what your age, desired activity level, or interests, this guide will show you exactly how you can enjoy Iceland. Utilize the outspoken opinions, exact prices, suggested itineraries, detailed map, off-the-beaten-path experiences, undiscovered gems and an easy-to-read two-color design for a customized adventure.
Sometimes grim, sometimes uproarious, and always captivating, Iceland’s Bell by Nobel Laureate Halldór Laxness is at once an updating of the traditional Icelandic saga and a caustic social satire. At the close of the 17th century, Iceland is an oppressed Danish colony, suffering under extreme poverty, famine, and plague. A farmer and accused cord-thief named Jon Hreggvidsson makes a bawdy joke about the Danish king and soon after finds himself a fugitive charged with the murder of the king’s hangman.
Originally published in 1946 and out of print for decades, this book by the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author is a huge, skaldic treat filled with satire, humor, pathos, cold weather and sheep. Gudbjartur Jonsson becomes Bjartur of Summerhouses when, after 18 years of service to the Bailiff of Myri, he is able to buy his own croft. Summerhouses is probably haunted and is certainly unprepossessing, but Bjartur is a stubborn, leathery old (whatever his age) coot, and he soon has his new bride and few head of sheep installed in a sod house. When his wife dies cold and alone giving birth to the daughter of the Bailiff’s son, Bjartur takes the child on almost as another test of his independence. Bjartur survives another wife, three sons that lived and several dead ones, all with his “armour of scepticism,” which “endowed him with greater moral fortitude than that possessed by the other men.” Through hard times (in the guises of worms and a cow that threaten his precious sheep), Bjartur maintains his ferocious and self-destructive independence, one aimed not so much at bettering his condition as being able to tell his former employer where to get off. Laxness is merciless with the hypocrisy of the upper classes, as exemplified by the Bailiff’s poetess wife, who applauds the simple life of poor country people, or the Bailiff’s son, whose social-welfare schemes help him but undermine the crofters. Laxness is not easy on Bjartur, who is bloody-minded in the extreme, but he is tender enough to compose a poem to his exiled adoptive daughter, and bold enough to engrave a simple marker in honor of the misunderstood ghoul who has haunted his farm and family. He’s a figure that Snorri Sturluson would have recognized.
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This dazzlingly illustrated volcano guide documents the 20 hottest volcanoes of the 1,900 that pockmark Earth’s surface, including recent eruptions that seared landscapes and lives. It is a relevant reference for the 500+ million people who live in active volcano zones and others who are intrigued by our planet’s primal pageantry.
‘For the first time in many years, a history of Iceland has appeared in English which really does its multifaceted subject justice. Beginning with colonisation around the year 87, it concludes with the year 2000, having taken the reader through Iceland’s period of foreign domination, by the Norwegians, then the English and finally the Danes, who ruled the country until 1944. Politics, religion, economics and technological innovation are covered in detail, while the role of women and literature, ancient and modern, including, of course, the sagas, are also discussed’ -Neil Kent, Times Literary Supplement’This is a truly important book and there is nothing like it available. [A...] I was enthralled reading this. [A...] It will fill the needs of all types of readers interested in Iceland, Scandinavia, and Northern Europe. It will A… become the major work.’ -Jesse Byrock, Professor of Icelandic Studies, University of California
