“His books dance — with light, quick steps, never breaking eye contact — all over the line between the mythic and the mundane.”
Iceland
Memorializing a Glacier and Hoping for the Future
Iceland holds a funeral for Okjökull, once a glacier, now “dead ice.”
How to Mourn a Glacier
Essayist Lacy M. Johnson attends a funeral in Iceland for “Okjökull” — once a glacier 16 square kilometers in surface, and now “only a small patch of slushy gray ice.” In personifying shrinking masses of ice — key geographical features of the area, and the planet — officials hope to impress upon people the dire […]
My Own Private Iceland
When an island nation of 300,000 residents receives more than two million tourists a year, radical change is inevitable — but is it all negative?
The Symbiotics of Harvesting Eider Down
“There is an irresistible simplicity to the relationship between the harvesters and the eiders.”
West Across the Sea
Tryggvi Hlinason is a sheep farmer at the center of a new generation of Icelandic basketball talent. He’s trying to do something that only one other Icelander has done before — play in the NBA.
Putting a New Stone on the Grave: Sjón Brings the Golem to Iceland
Sjón’s “CoDex 1962” is the fulfillment of a pact he made with the Maharal of Prague in the Old Jewish Cemetery almost three decades ago.