I have been following Alda Sigmundsdóttir on various social networking sites and her blog for some time, so I was very pleased to receive one of her books as a birthday present from my daughter. I already had two of her books, ‘Living Inside the Meltdown’ about Iceland’s financial disaster, and ‘Icelandic Folk Legends’.
Alda is a writer, translator and journalist living in Reykjavik, however she has spent many years living in other countries and so is able to see things as an outsider as well as an insider. She writes about Iceland, the politics, the economic situation, the culture and language… and writes in a fresh and amusing as well as informative way.
I have only been to Iceland as a tourist, but completely lost my heart to the country so it is fascinating to learn more about it as it really is from an inside point of view. Alda is very witty, very funny, cynical and expressive. Travelling round with a tour guide just touches the surface of any place, and even reading extensively about a country, novels, poems, sagas, blogs, cannot always get you beneath that surface. I’m sure it is impossible to do so properly unless you live in a place, but reading articles by journalists and writers like Alda help to give a more informed insight.
http://www.theguardian.com/profile/alda-sigmundsd-ttir
https://www.facebook.com/icelandweatherreport
Lois Elsden 