Author: - The Reykjavik Grapevine

Author: Ian Watson

This Was The Real Iceland

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It is a little difficult to decide which of two ways to describe Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon’s new book ‘Wasteland With…

Vikings in America

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By now we all know that Scandinavian settlers reached Greenland in the late 900s and built settlements there that endured…

Two New Guidebooks To Iceland

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Need to buy a guidebook to Iceland? You can choose from Lonely Planet, the Rough Guides, Frommer’s, Insight Guides, and…

The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman

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The title and blurb of this book leads you to think it’s about Guðríður Þorbjarnardóttir, the wife of Þorfinnur Karlsefni…

Children’s Reykjavík

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By the time adults have children, they’re often out of touch with kid culture and need help figuring out what…

Book Review: The Travels Of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson

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On a summer day in 1627, pirates landed on Heimaey, the largest of the Westmann Islands. They swarmed over the…

The Windows of Brimnes

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In 1998, Minnesotan writer and teacher Bill Holm bought himself a house called Brimnes in Hofsós, a small village a…

Inside Reykjavík: The Grapevine Guide

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Yes, I have a conflict of interest in reviewing this book, as I have done work for the author, and…

The English Dane

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On 25 June 1809, the Danish governor of Iceland, Frederik Trampe, was arrested in his home on Aðalstræti in Reykjavík,…

Dreaming of Iceland: The Lure of a Family Legend

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 Scottish television anchor Sally Magnusson asked her father, the Icelandic-Scottish translator and television personality Magnus Magnusson, to go with her…

The Killer’s Guide to Iceland

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The main character in this novel is a Scottish dot-com entrepreneur who sells his company and moves to Iceland to…

Two Holes in Your Pocket

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You’re an Icelander, studying at an American university, and you’re pregnant. You had planned to go home to Iceland to…

You Too Can be a Citizen

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At the Grapevine’s request, the Icelandic Ministry of Justice has explained the procedure for applying to receive fast-track Icelandic citizenship…

Iceland-China

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As Iceland and China moved closer towards signing a free trade agreement, the state television news came up with a…

Five Classic Books About Moving to the North Atlantic

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You know the story already: a comfortably off writer buys an old farmhouse in France or Italy, drags their sceptical…

Roots Tourism in Hofsós

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At the Icelandic Emigration Centre in Hofsós, Nelson Gerrard shows me a thick, heavy book that he wrote about the…

Who Knows How the System Works?

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On April 16, 2007, the Icelandic Parliament passed a law granting Icelandic citizenship to eighteen people who presumably did not…

Share Your Ancestors

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Iceland’s genealogy is nearly done. “Finishing” a whole nation’s genealogy would be unthinkable in North America or Western Europe, where…

Recent Books about Iceland

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The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule By Joanna Kavenna. The Ice Museum is a kind…

Beware: Polar Bear May Bite

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I had never been on cruise ship in my life before I spent three weeks last summer giving lectures on…

If You Can’t Make It to Gdan´sk

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Stokrotka is Iceland’s Polish supermarket, and like a good foreign food store, it has some things that you just can’t…

We Know Your Identity Number:

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The kennitala — Iceland’s personal identification number — has been getting a bad rap lately. Persónuvernd (the Icelandic Data Protection…

Identity Theft:

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More than 600,000 Americans and more than 100,000 British residents fall victim to identity theft every year. It can take…

Cheaper Calls Abroad

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Buy a phone card. Three companies, Atlassími (www.atlassimi.is), Heimsfrelsi (www.heimsfrelsi.is), and Digital Frelsi (www.phone.is) sell pre-paid calling cards. The per-minute…