Island Zombie

September 1, 2020
An American visual artist collects her writing from four decades of sojourns to Iceland. Horn first traveled to Iceland in 1975 at age 19, and she has been drawn to the island ever since, as reflected in this combination of poetry, short essays, oral histories, architectural reviews, and environmental jeremiads. In the book's first section, featuring pieces published in the 1990s, the author writes about what has kept her coming back: wild weather, uninterrupted horizons, and solitude--a holiday from "the friction of seeing and knowing." Traveling by motorcycle, she camped in outbuildings and lighthouses, and she notes how Iceland's lack of violence, reptiles, and large mammals was liberating for a traveling single woman. "Relief from fear is freedom," she writes. Horn trains her artist's eye on the country's fantastic volcanic landscapes, black beaches and white surf, and hot springs found in every corner of the island. Sensually arresting, these passages are solitary meditations in an empty landscape; at times, readers long for someone else to show up. In the second section, the author offers a series of oral histories about the weather. These short installments, three pages at the most, are eloquent descriptions from ordinary people, testaments to the intricate dance between the islanders and their wild weather conditions: obliterating blizzards, relentless wind, and even incidents of freezing and drowning. A government commissioner calmly reports seeing spirits on his long walks through the lava fields, and older citizens express a generalized unease about climate change. The final sections feel padded: reprints of Horn's environmental opinion pieces and meditations on specific island locations accompanied by images of previously published photographs that fail to illuminate the place. The first sections of the book will stoke the desire for a more in-depth study of Iceland; the others will interest veteran Iceland-watchers. A sometimes vivid yet uneven portrait of an artist's many years traveling to and observing Iceland.

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October 1, 2020

Horn (Remembered Words) refers to herself as a "permanent tourist" in Iceland, having made frequent and extended sojourns there since the 1970s. The author has walked, hitchhiked, and traveled its environs by dirt bike, staying in tents, and occupying an abandoned lighthouse. Her deep connections with this cold-blooded, treeless terrain are revealed through lyrical prose punctuated with poetry verses. Her vignettes contrast the dreaminess of the place with the harsh realities of its unforgiving winds, ice, floods, lava flows, and ash. Horn delves into how the extreme climate conditions shape the country's culture and explains how Iceland is "[b]ig enough to get lost on; small enough to find yourself." Her existential musings are supplemented by reports from Icelanders young, middle-aged, and old, reminiscing about their lives, and excerpts of Horn's writings published in Iceland's nationally distributed newspaper. VERDICT this memoir will resonate with readers who have traveled to Iceland, those who have this place on a bucket list of destinations, and others who crave solitude as a journey, not minding storm and stress.--Elizabeth Connor, Daniel Lib., The Citadel, Military Coll. of South Carolina, Charleston

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