Viking Chronicle
Gemma zoe price escapes to a literary retreat on the outskirts of Akureyri, Iceland’s second city
CURLED UP ON the wide, plush couch at new literary getaway Place to Read in Akureyri in northern Iceland, I fold my dog-eared copy of The Handmaid’s Tale lightly over the blanket on my lap and listen to the wind whistling through the cobbled streets outside. I’m just 100km from the Arctic Circle, and I imagine the weather stirring the firs around Eyjafjörður fjord below and blurring the reflection of surrounding snow-capped mountains on the water’s surface. As I reach for my glass of Zinfandel, the flames from the log fire cast long flickering tongues through the wine’s ruby depths.
I can’t help but feel deliciously cosy, which is, of course, what Place to Read founders Halldór Lárusson and Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir want. Inspired partly by London’s School of Life
Reading Retreats and their personal experiences at Britain’s Hay Festival of Literature and the
Arts, the husband-and-wife team created the “thinking person’s action holiday” – a retreat that offers opportunities both to explore Iceland’s wild landscapes and to luxuriate in hours of reading.
There are mixed comfy reading chairs, sofas and lamps picked up at auctions, and attics with beautiful Icelandic textiles, ceramics and original art works to give the exclusive-use house – which encompasses a large kitchen and dining area, a two-bedroom apartment and two one-bedroom apartments – a modern yet homey Nordic feel.
When I’ve finished this novel, I can simply choose from the stacks of books and periodicals in English, Icelandic, French and German arranged on every available surface. “Today, with all the entertainment and bombardment of information and our busy lives, reading has become such a luxury,” Sigurjónsdóttir, known as Sigga, tells me. “Nothing can happen until you create a place for it. We’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time.”
Sigga says Iceland’s interrelated storytelling traditions and chilly Nordic climate make it the ideal destination for discovering literature, and for being the place to read. When the Vikings first settled the island, entire villages would come together in the