Icelandic kvöldvaka & author visit – Sarah Thomas

KVÖLDVAKA, or ”Night Wakings”, hails back to early days of human habitation in Iceland.

Storytellers travelled from home to home spinning tales for Icelandic families as they rested from a long day of work in the inhospitable terrain.

The Night Wakings were how traditions and understanding of the natural world were passed on.

ABOUT THE BOOK & AUTHOR
As an anthropologist and film-maker in 2008, Sarah Thomas is spellbound by its otherworldly landscape. An immediate love for this country and for Bjarni, a man she meets there, turns a week-long stay into a transformative half-decade, one which radically alters Sarah’s understanding of herself and of the living world. She embarks on a relationship not only with Bjarni, but with the light, the language, and the old wooden house they make their home.

She finds a place where the light of the midwinter full moon reflected by snow can be brighter than daylight, where the earth can tremor at any time, and where the word for echo – bergmal – translates as ’the language of the mountain’.

In the midst of crisis both personal and planetary, as her marriage falls apart, Sarah finds inspiration in the artistry of a raven’s nest: a home which persists through breaking and reweaving – over and over. Written in beautifully vivid prose The Raven’s Nest is a profoundly moving meditation on place, identity and how we might live in an era of environmental disruption.