With an average of one and a half murders a year in Iceland it is hard to imagine where Icelandic crime and horror novel writer, Yrsa Sigurdardóttírr, gets her inspiration from.
Often referred to as “the Deon Meyer of the north”, the highly successful Sigurdardóttírr spoke to Deon Meyer himself in the ATKV-Boektent as part of the Writers Festival at Woordfees 2019, about her journey of becoming a writer and her experiences as a working engineer, navigating the life of a successful writer.
Yrsa Sigurdardóttírr and Deon Meyer in conversation in the ATKV-Boektent. PHOTO: Jana Greyling
Sigurdardóttírr started her career in writing as a children’s books author. She decided to start writing her own books when her son was eight years old and refused to read books.
“The urge to write only came when my son was about eight years old and I realised that he did not read and did not like reading. I was very worried about him because I think that to be able to be a kind person, a person who is enlightened, who understands how other people feel, you have to read.”
She thus decided that she would start writing children’s books in an attempt to get her son to read, but Sigurdardóttírr also felt that she could improve on the books that were available to children at the time. In total, Sigurdardóttírr has published five children’s books.
Her son ended up not reading her books, she told the audience with a laugh. He only started enjoying reading at the age of 18, when Sigurdardóttírr started paying him to read books she was receiving for free from other authors.
“I just didn’t have time to read [all the books that were sent to me]. So, I paid my son a salary to read them and tell me what they were about. Then he was older. This made him into a reader and now he reads and no one is paying him.”
After completing her last children’s book, which also won the Icelandic Children’s Book Prize, she decided to put her writing career on hold.
Sigurdardóttírr explains: “I just didn’t like [the book that won the award] and I thought ‘ok, so they think this is a great book, I think it’s not very good. I have no idea what I’m doing, obviously, and I’m just going to quit’.”
When a friend, who was opening a new publishing house, approached her with the suggestion to write crime novels, she decided to give writing another try.
Books by Yrsa Sigurdardóttírr and Deon Meyer being sold before the start of the show. PHOTO: Jana Greyling
The success that she achieved with her books, however, started impacting her day job and career as a civil engineer.
When she won the prize for the best Scandinavian crime novel in the UK and her work started receiving even more attention, she decided to focus more on her career as an author and began to work only part-time as an engineer.
She has now been writing crime and horror novels for about 14 years, releasing a new book once a year.
However, Sigurdardóttírr does not want to give up her day job as an engineer completely. She explains that she needs to work in teams and have social interactions with other people because that is the working environment she was used to working in for most of her life.
“I do not want to give up my day job because I find that writing is very lonely. […] I write a book a year and I’ve done this for 14 years in a row now and once a year you get this feeling of fulfilment. That was just not enough for me. […] I need this social interaction with people.”
When she settles down to write her novels or horror stories, Sigurdardóttírr likes to sit on her sofa while horror movies play on the television in the background.
“I’m not watching [the horror movies] but they’re there. So, the score and the atmosphere, while I’m writing, is kind of horror-ish. It helps me to get in the mood [to write].”
In the future, Sigurdardóttírr told Meyer, she would like to write another horror novel and might also try her hand at writing an apocalyptic novel.
3 facts about Iceland with Yrsa Sigurdardóttírr
- Meyer explained to the audience that Iceland is a Nordic island-country in the North Atlantic Ocean with a population of 348 000 people and an area of 103 000 square kilometers. Meyer clarified that this is about a third smaller than the Free State province and a third of the population of the city of Bloemfontein.
- Sigurdardóttírr mentioned that there are about one and a half murders a year in Iceland “and usually these murders are solved when the police arrive on the scene because the murderer is going to be standing over the body thinking ‘what the hell did I just do?’. So, it’s more people that know each other who get drunk or drugged and they start to argue.”
- In Iceland a person gets their last name according to the name of their father and whether they are male or female. Sigurdardóttírr explains: “My name is Sigurdardóttírr. ‘Dóttírr’ means daughter and my father’s first name is Sigurdar. So, I am his daughter and I am Sigurdardóttírr.”