Languages

On a strange island uninhabited by adults, danger lurks in this story by Thórdís Helgadóttir.   Words Without Borders · Thórdís Helgadóttir reads "Hafið Gefur Okkur Börn" ("The Sea Gives Us Children") Listen to Thórdís Helgadóttir read "The Sea Gives Us Children" in the original Icelandic. There are no boats on the island. Sometimes, Guðrún and I go down to the beach, just to let the wind...

Activists volunteering in a Greek refugee camp confront uncomfortable questions about European guilt and the limits of good intentions in this excerpt from Steinunn G. Helgadóttir’s novel The Strongest Woman in the World.   Words Without Borders · Steinunn G. Helgadóttir reads from "Sterkasta kona í heimi" ("The Strongest Woman in the World") Listen to Steinunn G. Helgadóttir read from "The Strongest Woman in the World" in the original...

Day and night, light and dark, and humanity and the natural world converge in this poem by Bergrún Anna Hallsteinsdóttir.   Words Without Borders · Bergrún Anna Hallsteinsdóttir reads "Það er erfitt að reikna út áhrif næturmissis" Listen to Bergrún Anna Hallsteinsdóttir read "It's Difficult to Calculate the Influence of the Missus of the Night" in the original Icelandic. “Það...

Societal pressure and the corrosive effect of ambition are at the heart of this short story by Fríða Ísberg. We shell time from the nuts and teach it to walk: time returns to the shell. –– Paul Celan, “Corona” (Trans. Pierre Joris)   She’s in the middle of moving the first time she sees him. Or notices him is maybe a more accurate way to put it, you never know in Reykjavik, she’s probably seen him dozens of times over the...

A tenuous link between the corporeal and spiritual forms the backdrop of Haukur Ingvarsson's poem about our relationship to the changing natural world, from his 2018 collection Ecostentialism.     Words Without Borders · Haukur Ingvarsson reads part IV of "Allt Sekkur" ("Sinkings") Listen to Haukur Ingvarsson read part IV of "Sinkings" in the original Icelandic.   Words Without Borders · Haukur Ingvarsson reads part V of "Allt Sekkur"...

After his wife’s sudden departure, Böddi speaks to his brother over coffee in this story about regret, love, and family by Björn Halldórsson.   Words Without Borders · Björn Halldórsson reads "Eiginmaðurinn og bróðir hans" ("The Husband & His Brother")   Listen to Björn Halldórsson read "The Husband and His Brother" in the original Icelandic.   Jóhann was the first to stand up when the...

Eva Rún Snorradóttir illuminates lesbian parenthood and partnership in this poem from the 2018 Maístjarnan Award-winning collection Seeds that Impregnate the Darkness.   Two women sit on a little sofa in an office on the outskirts of the capital. Across from them, behind a desk, sits an elderly man in a white coat. A map showing the inner topography of the vagina is plastered on the wall behind him. They’d argued with the cab driver on the way. He’d...

Warning: This text includes descriptions of intimate partner abuse and may be disturbing to readers. In this excerpt from Thora Hjörleifsdóttir’s debut novel, Magma, a woman narrates the evolution of an abusive relationship.   Words Without Borders · ChlamydThora Hjórleifsdóttir reads “Klamydía” (“Chlamydia”) from "Kvika" (“Magma”) Listen to Thora Hjórleifsdóttir read...

Andri Snær Magnason travels to the Snæfellsjökull glacier in Iceland and contemplates environmental responsibility, collective action, and hope in the face of global warming.   In the future, glaciers will be an alien phenomenon, rare as a Bengal tiger. Having lived in the time of the white giants will become swaddled in a fairytale glow, like having stroked a dragon or handled the eggs of the great auk. Glaciers will certainly be found in the Arctic, Greenland, and...

In the grip of obsession, a man turns an open relationship into a triangle in an excerpt from a novel by Kári Tulinius.  Listen to Kári Tulinius read "Abel's Autobiography" in the original Icelandic.   Life never chooses the right moment to unveil love to you for the first time, when you’ve not yet experienced it—not, for instance, at a moment when the days are lumbering by at a crawl, like station wagons in bumper-to-bumper traffic—but...

Fragments from the Guidebook of the Dead                         First daytrip/ Kolafjöll No lemonwood grows here, but those interested should note a pale moonwort inching its way from under the lava rock On the Sunny Side There are planets that have two suns and black plants— even though there are two suns and the plants are the color of night there are...

The tallest mountain on Mars is 24 kilometers high and I have climbed it in my dreams. I remember the view from the peak: magnificent; the blue planet swam in the half-twilight of evening. I seem to remember Louis Armstrong was with me, no, Lance Armstrong, no it was Neil Armstrong, I mean. When I awoke I was still in hiking boots caked with red clay, which I scraped off the soles and rolled into a tiny moon.

Did you never get my letter, Mister Brown? it was aurora pink and glittery and I poured perfume from the tester all over it Mister Brown, “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love me,” do I look like a terrorist? I am not the (hu)man with the wine I’m a completely different (hu)man when I’m drunk I am more (hu)man a stronger and bigger (hu)man when I’m drunk greed, ambition, the crazy jealousy are not characteristics characteristic...

Friday. A summer day. The sun shines. Everyone takes off socks and sweaters and jeans. Beautiful girls spread out blankets on the grass. Beautiful girls have a good day, a summer day. When evening falls, they go out and dance until morning and go home with a boy or a girl and wake hungover but happy for the new day, the summer day. The dizzying scent of freshly cut grass. A wriggling blossom in a flower bed. Dolphins leap in the bay. The sun shines. Nothing is missing. Babies smile...

In memory of Jónas Þorbjarnarson (1960-2012)   1. The dark kaiser’s ship, deep-keeled, cuts the water from head to head, breaks and sinks.        * The one who is here to tell us what it means to drown also knows the miracle of lungs filling anew with air when the body shoots up to the surface, treading water, gasping for breath. 2. It seeps into the brain, the black sea:...

EVOLUTION (1) Flight of the dwarf wasp, wingspan one millimeter beating 350 times per second finally captured in a photograph. After one million millenia of steadily evolving technology.   EVOLUTION (2) Let me help you said the ape. And placed the fish carefully in the crown of the tree. 

Bus I Wednesday arrives and my only thought is that I’m looking forward to taking the bus at noon. I didn’t know there would be days like this—days when the only thing I look forward to is the bus, and the only positive thing I think about myself is that I have clean hair. A new month arrives and I realize that the last month passed in the wish that it would simply pass. One summer I took the bus to work every morning. One day, I realized that the bus route had changed;...

It’s old and dilapidated, with dirty, tattered curtains covering the windows, the roof on the verge of collapse and the antenna dangling from the gable on its wire. There are cracks in all the outside walls and the paint, once white, is now stained brown and flaking off in many places. The garden is a jungle: trees and hedges growing unchecked, moss in the grass on the lawn, dandelions and daisies everywhere, and an ancient swing hanging from a tree. One of its ropes has frayed...

We had just moved into an apartment in the suburbs, with all the hassle of fetching and carrying and doing the sorts of things that you really wouldn’t bother with if you didn’t feel socially obliged to. On the seventh day after we had moved in, my wife said we must go to IKEA to buy an armchair that would go better with the sofa than our old one. I didn’t raise any objections, though I could see absolutely nothing wrong with our existing chair. “Remember the...

Once there was a town where no two people spoke the same language. No one used the same words for anything. And yet everyone understood everyone else and they all lived together in peace and harmony. Until recently, the locals were cheerful, cordial, and— though it’s hard to believe—talkative. The town was in a nameless region deep in central Europe. The place had no name because it was so remote that it was usually represented on maps as a black hole. That is, if it was...

marie curie and edvard munch lived in paris at around the same time munch was interested in new discoveries and went to visit the curies’ research laboratory on rue lhomond in the fifth arrondissement marie was alone there and showed the painter how she and pierre wrestled with radium, and then gave  him afternoon tea in the lithograph  munch sent her as a thank you present the woman scientist  sits among the equipment with her hand under her cheek the angle of...

when your eyes pause on the ball that hangs on the third branch from a star you remember why it got dark and why it is getting light again the earth (like the heart) leans back in its seat and like that it travels along an orbit drawn in the darkness unpolished pearl in sky-black palm of hand flickering sun-flame you remember that you yourself are a light-bearer who receives her radiance from others © Sjón. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2011 by David...

i remember the thirst and the darkness i remember one-way streets i remember closed alleys and you you pointed to a cellar door there used to be a pub there which we visited a lot here it is you said comfortingly your stone collection it isn’t lost in the shelves behind the bar waits the iceland spar all my stones brimstone – pyrite – opal and jasper – dear friends! none of you have i forgotten and up there on the ceiling hang the...

He lies and dreams. A great ash tree spreads out its crown and girls come with buckets and water its roots. He tosses and turns, then looks up. Beside him sits a gray-haired woman, stroking his hand. The veins stand out like those on a leaf. “You’re as beautiful as ever, Dísa dear,” he says, closing his eyes. They always used to dance in the kitchen. His daughters wet a cloth and wash his feet. He lies still, thinking about Arctic terns. *** I walk into the...

The cold makes me a lair from fear places a pillow of downy drift under my head a blanket of snow to swaddle me in I’d lay my ear to the cracking of the ice in the hope of hearing it retreat if I didn’t know I’d be frozen fast The ice lets no one go My country a spread deathbed my initials stitched on the icy linen “Ættjarðarljóð" © Gerdur Kristný. By arrangement with the author. Translation copyright 2011...

I try to be kind to the children so they’ll tend my grave when the time comes crumble biscuits in the grass on my birthday and recite the poem about the gambolling cows themselves grown old and grey All the same I will know them again by the heavenly smell of the stable may they always be fragrant as the Jesus child Translation of "Skagafjörður." © Gerdur Kristný. By arrangement with the author. Translation copyright 2011 by Victoria Cribb....

Allegretto villereccio This Wednesday in the last week of November is the first winter evening of the season. Until now it hasn’t gotten that cold; instead, it’s rained every which way, and more than once since October I’ve thought of leaving this dreadful southwest corner of the country, of heading somewhere far away, somewhere up in the north, even going to another country, one where there’s a proper winter, like those we pretend we remember from childhood. But...

Hildur is seven. She says when people die they lie motionless in a coffin –she shows me how–forever in heaven. She says she’s preparing herself. She says she will pick a very comfortable position. © Sigurbjorg Þrastardottir. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2011 by T. Zachary Cotler. All rights reserved.

Three women poets in white bras sit at a small round table. Book in hand. A man in a pirate sweater comes in through the door out of the snowstorm and sits down at the women’s table. He takes off his sweater. He touches one of them, they are all dead. And won’t come alive again. Though they await his kisses. Then he rises scoops up in his arms the woman he had touched and carries her out. The draft as the door flies open and falls shut leafs...

Two middle-aged women, who do the paper-route, drag the cart beside them along the ice-covered sidewalk, silent beneath the hoods of their anoraks. They remind me of passengers hauling their luggage, looking for the exit in a gigantic, deserted airport. Aside from the creaking of the cart, nothing can be heard except the droning of the air-conditioning system at St. Joseph’s Hospital, or perhaps they’re kindling the ovens at the crematorium. It’s been busy since the...

As I sit at the dinner table I watch the three men who have sucked at my breasts. One of them still sucks them, two sucked them for a time. I look at the sun pouring through the window and look at the glasses on the table. I look at the three mouths, opening and closing because of the food. I look at the food disappear from the table as the sun moves across the window. I say: You have all sucked at my breasts. While they wipe their mouths with their napkins. They nod and...

The following tale could well have been told on the one-thousand-and-second night: In the first decade of the nineteenth century there lived in Reykjavík a merchant who sold new and secondhand furniture in a shop he ran on the first floor of a house his wife owned right next to the city lake. He bought some of his furniture in Copenhagen and had it shipped to him in Iceland. His wife’s house stood a stone’s throw away from the City Theater, where plays of both a sad...

In Café Borges on Bankastræti everyone has brown eyes. Here they once sold pantyhose– says Simone–that forked like paths in two, even three. Yes–says Tiziano–lovers fought here until someone laid a sword between them, naked. Fires are burning. In Café Borges on Bankastræti everyone has stubble and a smile. You have the widows and the widowers who slurp soup spiced with Fáfnir’s-grass and add in adages with...

On one of many occasions Greta Garbo visited her fellow actress Marilyn Monroe in her home town, the City of Angels. Greta, who lived in New York, flew to the West Coast, took a taxi at the airport, and rode home to Marilyn, who welcomed her in her usual fashion, barefoot in a simple dress. She often wore an apron too because she loved baking rolls for Greta, who kindled her passion for rolls. Greta said she had this effect on people; they wanted to bake and feed her all sorts of...