At some time in the distant past, I went to Cuba – not as a tourist, but as an invited guest for the launch of a book of Canadian short stories translated into Spanish. There were eight of us, guests and representatives of Canada. We all had stories in the anthology. Mine was called “Flores de sangre” – “Bloodflowers.” It is the story that launched me from obscurity into public consciousness. As Margaret Atwood said in a review, where did he come from? The answer is that he came from the reservation created by the Canadian government that was called New Iceland. It wasn’t even part of Manitoba when the Icelanders arrived in 1875. The federal government’s obsessions were to stop the northward push of Americans and to unite the country with a railway from sea to sea. Their solution was to create reservations for many different immigrant groups. The Icelandic reserve eventually failed, and the land was opened up to other settlers. However, the identity that had been created, remained. Remained even into the days of my youth. Remains now. The Icelanders gave up their distinct clothing as they adapted to a world of forests instead of a world of glaciers and volcanoes; however, they never gave up their love of reading and writing. To be a writer among this group now scattered from New Iceland to Vancouver Island to Prince Edward Island, to Minnesota, North Dakota, Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin and other places, one hundred and fifty years later, is still important.

While going through a pile of sheet music she had salvaged from her mother’s house in Langruth MB, a friend of mine found a thin book of music written by S.K. Hall of Wynyard, Saskatchewan. Entitled Songs of Iceland with English texts, the booklet contains eight compositions and is dedicated “to my wife Sigrid Anna, who has done so much for Icelandic culture by her artistic singing.” The booklet is, according to the front cover, “Volume No. 2” in a three-volume set. The final three pages include the Icelandic poems which were translated into English and set to Hall’s music. One of them is by Stephan G. Stephansson, who was, as I would learn, a good friend of Hall’s. A handwritten note on the front cover says, “To Miss Violet Helgason with compliments from the composer.” The price tag is $1.75. Violet Helgason was a piano teacher in Langruth, Manitoba, for twenty-five years. When she retired, she gave some of her music to my friend’s mother, herself a pianist and organist.

I have read and enjoyed many books by Icelandic authors, both fiction and non-fiction, and selecting three to recommend to other readers is difficult, but I have managed to come up with three names. All three are well known and have earned international acclaim. Iceland’s geography and climate play a role in each of their novels. And genealogical research has revealed that all three are on my family tree, albeit far removed from its trunk. Given my love for/addiction to Scandinavian and European crime fiction, it is not surprising that two of the three authors on my list are crime writers.