Declaiming Poems, Stopping Dams: An Interview with Andri Snær Magnason

Songs in the Refrigerator: An Interview with Ólöf Arnalds

Mermaid

Around the corner of the dilapidated fishing shacks, I am caught off guard by a mermaid staring back at me. She is made of shells and stones and…

Yggdrasil

The wind makes an instrument of scaffolding. As I wander through town, hollow notes resound from metal pipes, but the song is distant — as…

Hoofbeat

Tumbling. This is the constant. Froth and fullness — a cauldron stirred. Waters roar in an undying wave as mist blankets the nearby hills.

Long Shadows

As day yawns on toward evening, everything in Reykjavík wears a long shadow. In the small cobbled park, I find a young girl made of bronze. Though she has knelt on this same spot for years, I am new to this ground. Until today, I had not known this place existed. Branches nod in quiet supplication. The…

Respite

The storms have ended. Bitter cold sets in again. The sky is deceptively blue and cloudless, but the air is arctic; once outside, your blood…

The Invisible Moot

Seven wooden thrones form a crescent on a knob of land by the bay. Their vast size and arrangement suggest some kind of…

Cusp

Feet can only take you so far. Out at the world’s edge, grass glints golden against gravel. The horizon is a thin seam between sea and sky: unzip it…

Ruin

The sagging buildings lean against each other. An abandoned boat squats in the lee of the wind. This cluster of concrete and rust sits on the margins…