Hannah Kent is the reason I went to Iceland. Her award-winning first novel Burial Rites (2013) is a speculative biography of the murderer Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman to be executed in Iceland. The novel is often set for VCE English in Victoria and I picked it up because my son was studying it. We had already planned a trip to Europe to celebrate the end of school. After discussing Burial Rites with him across the year, it seemed right to add some days in Iceland to our itinerary.
It’s fair to say that Iceland is not on the radar of most Australians. The most common response I received when sharing our travel plans was confusion. But having visited that small island with its massive snowdrifts, frozen waterfalls, blasts of icy wind, fascinating people and magic lore, I can understand why it has taken root in Kent’s imagination.
