Icelandic Nobility relates how Thórdarson falls in love with a fellow lodger during the winter of 1911–12. Too shy and awkward to court her then, he gets a labouring job in her home fjord the following summer to pursue his suit with her there. After a comical and disastrous attempt to woo his beloved, however, he flees north to the herring wharfs of northern Iceland, where he meets an array of extraordinary, colourful characters from whom he learns a great deal about the realities of love, life, sex and poetry.

In September he sets sail for home, but leaves the ship in the far north of the Westfjords and embarks on the most famous walk in Icelandic literature (over 300 km), in order to ‘drop in’ on his beloved on his way south. Will she be at home? How will she receive him? Will he be more adept at courting her this time? And is he, indeed, telling us the whole truth?

Thorbergur Thordarson (1888–1974) was a popular essayist, poet, social commentator, biographer and novelist, famous for his imaginative and eclectic use of the Icelandic language and his blurring of autobiographical facts with pure fiction. Many literary scholars consider his contribution to Icelandic literature as important as that of his perhaps better-known friend and contemporary author, Halldór Laxness.

Translated by Julian Meldon D’Arcy.