Icelandic Series
Christopher Taylor
Issue 20 Autumn 1999
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A novel by the Icelandic Nobel laureate Haldor Laxness - 'Christianity at Glacier' sent to me by my mother-in-law (who can't read) provided the initial impetus for the series. I have been visiting my wife's family in Iceland for 15 years. I began at the base of an extinct volcano topped by a small glacier at the tip of a peninsula where my nephew was employed by a fish packer. The glacier, which is held by Icelanders to possess a spiritual potency, is the setting for the novel by Laxness, and coincidently the starting point for Jules Verne's 'journey to the Centre of the Earth'.
"At night when the sun is off the mountains the glacier becomes a tranquil silhouette that rests in itself and breathes upon man and beast the word never which perhaps means always. Come, waft of death." Haldor Laxness - 'Christianity at Glacier'
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