The raven's nest : an Icelandic journey through light and darkness

The raven's nest An Icelandic journey through light and darkness

Sarah Thomas

Book - 2023

Visiting Iceland as an anthropologist and film-maker in 2008, Sarah Thomas is spellbound by its otherworldly landscape. An immediate love for this country and for Bjarni, a man she meets there, turns a week-long stay into a transformative half-decade, one which radically alters Sarah's understanding of herself and of the living world. She embarks on a relationship not only with Bjarni, but with the light, the language, and the old wooden house they make their home. She finds a place where the light of the midwinter full moon reflected by snow can be brighter than daylight, where the earth can tremor at any time, and where the word for echo - bergmal - translates as 'the language of the mountain'. In the midst of crisis both p...ersonal and planetary, as her marriage falls apart, Sarah finds inspiration in the artistry of a raven's nest: a home which persists through breaking and reweaving - over and over.

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Subjects
Thomas, Sarah, > (Sarah E. A.)
Thomas, Sarah > (Sarah A.)
Social conditions.
Iceland > Social life and customs.
Iceland > Description and travel.
Iceland > Social conditions.
Iceland.
Autobiographies.
Genres
Autobiographies
Published
London : Atlantic Books 2023.
Language
English
Main Author
Sarah Thomas (author)
Physical Description
328 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : colour illustrations ; 20 cm
ISBN
9781838956714
  • Breaking Up
  • Landing
  • Shift
  • Tónleikar - Concert
  • Fjallafang - Embrace of the Mountains
  • Matarœði - Diet
  • Gíslholt
  • Seal Wife
  • Að smala og að slátra - Gathering and Slaughtering
  • Gos - Eruption/Gas/Fizzy Drink
  • Flytja - To Move
  • Krummi - Raven
  • Bogguhús
  • The Frozen Bell
  • A Floating House
  • Trúlofun - Engagement
  • Selur - Seal
  • Ρakið - Roof
  • A Walk in My Valley
  • Göng - Passage/Corridor/Tunnel
  • Að snúa - To Turn; Snuúið - Complicated
  • Innflytjandi - Importer/Immigrant
  • The Strangest Silence
  • Svartfuglsegg - 'Black-birds-egg'
  • Hvalurinn - The Whale
  • Seljavallalaug - 'Shieling-plains-pool'
  • Herring Adventure
  • To Hell and Back
  • The Raven's Nest
  • Sjóndeildarhringur - Horizon
  • Acknowledgements
Review by Booklist Review

Writer and documentary filmmaker Thomas recalls in luminous detail the five years she spent primarily in Iceland. In 2008, Thomas, then in her late twenties and living in England after a childhood in Kenya, went to Iceland for a filmmaking conference and fell precipitously in love with the country--and with taciturn young Icelander Bjarni, whom she moved in with in 2010, married in 2012, and divorced in 2014. Rather than summarizing the whole of her experience, Thomas jumps from one magical scene to the next: a day with her in-laws gathering in the sheep from their summer on the mountains, a trip to one of many hot springs under the moonlight, the day when the sun finally creeps over the hills after a long, dark winter. While relatively reticent about her marriage, which seems to have ended because of Bjarni's deepening depression and the many months he spent working away from home, Thomas is deeply expressive about a landscape of "sea and islands, pebbles and seaweed, dandelions and lambs." A treat for armchair travelers.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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