The Stones Speak is Thorbergur Thordarson’s elegiac portrayal of his childhood and youth on the farm of Hali in Sudursveit, an isolated rural area of southeastern Iceland, in the late 19th century. It reveals his reverence for the beauty of the Sudursveit countryside and his enduring love of his family and neighbours and their language, history, and culture. It is a sometimes witty and funny, sometimes wry and sad, sometimes contemplative and mystical, but always affectionate portrait of a time, a place and a people, all of which have long since passed away.

The Stones Speak is not only an enchanting work of art, but also a vitally important witness to the way of life on an Icelandic turf farmstead in the 1890s.

Available in English.

“Thordarson is the most interesting – if eccentric – of all modern Icelandic writers …he was a superior writer.”
MARTIN SEYMOR-SMITH

“The Stones Speak has much in common with Marcel Proust’s search for an irretrievable past … both Thórdarson and Proust are describing a Paradise they have lost.”
PETUR GUNNARSSON, IN ALDARFÖR