For more than eight centuries, Icelanders have used literature to locate themselves in the world. This book tells the extraordinary story of how a remote, sparsely populated island became one of the most enduring literary cultures on earth.

In the late Middle Ages, Icelanders committed to parchment an astonishing body of world literature: prose narratives of conflict, love, honour and revenge among farmers on an island whose
population did not reach one hundred thousand. The surviving corpus dwarfs comparable medieval prose from the other Nordic countries.

This is a panoramic and highly readable account: from the Eddic poems and sagas, through Reformation, hardship and nation-building, to the international success of contemporary Icelandic fiction. The book places literature inside Iceland’s social and political history and reveals how storytelling became a form of cultural memory, survival and self-creation. Major works are presented through vivid human stories, allowing general readers to enter a tradition that can otherwise seem remote or forbiddingly specialised.

German published by btb / Penguin Random House in 2024.

“Halldór Guðmundsson has pulled off a dazzling journey through […] Icelandic history and literature.”
CHRISTHARD LÄPPLE, ZDF HEUTE JOURNAL