This is Gerdur Kristný‘s fifth book of poetry. The title comes from the book’s opening poem, Strandir, written about Iceland’s Strandir region, where the poet traces her family’s roots. The book is divided into four parts with the final part consisting of a single cycle called Ice Skating Trip. An English translation is available of this section.

„The piercing agony penetrates the reader to the core, hair stands on end and tears are spilled. The impact is at the same time terrifying and wondrous and stronger than I recall from reading any other text… Powerful, chiselled, aesthetic and beautifully composed poems, which emphazise once more Gerdur Kristny‘s stature as one of our foremost poets.“
FRIDRIKA BENONYSDOTTIR, FRETTABLADID DAILY

4 1/2 of 5 stars
“It’s a well-known and long established fact that Gerdur Kristny is a fine poet, one of the best we have, and in her new book of poems, Coastlines, she reaffirms this yet again. … Strandir travels far with few words. … The ice cold Ice Skating Trip, is a masterfully crafted poem, with strong imagery and agility. You feel the skate blades streak across the ice at top speed, driving with a determination that makes the ice flakes fly.”
MORGUNBLADID DAILY

“The poems of Strandir breathe a cold and biting beauty … Some of the poems are so striking that they instil real anxiety in the reader, the impact underlining Gerdur’s singularity among poets. The concluding series Ice Skating Trip is an example of just this. It sketches out an animated, even frightening, picture of painful love, where the speaker streaks over the ice in full force on razor sharp blades. Underneath the frozen surface she draws with her the shadow of her lover. Separating them is the ice, slippery as glass.”
KRISTJANA GUDBRANDSDOTTIR, DV DAILY