Book Discussion Group, Saturday, May 7, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

From Hanna Kent's biography at her official website:

Hannah Kent is a Melbourne-based writer, born in Adelaide in 1985. Her first novel, Burial Rites, has been translated into over twenty languages and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) and the Guardian First Book Award. It won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Indie Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year and the Victorian Premier's People's Choice Award, and has most recently been longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Hannah is also the co-founder and publishing director of Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings. She is currently writing her second novel. 

In the following video, Hannah Kent tells how Burial Rites grew out of her experiences as an exchange student in Iceland.

Background Information on Icelandic History and Language

Follow this link to a timeline of Icelandic history, which lends some insight into the tangle of overlapping jurisdictions and the necessity to quarter Agnes Magnúsdóttir at Jón Jónsson's farm while an official determination was made as to who was going to execute her and how.

There was a brief discussion of the Icelandic alphabet and pronunciation at the beginning of the book, at least in the hardcover version. Here is a link to a page on the Icelandic language that provides a more detailed

A Story of Cold, Dark, Long Winters and Isolation

Shoreline at Illugastaðir

This would be the area of the north Icelandic coast near where Natan Ketilsson's farm was located.

Sod construction on Icelandic farm

Row of sod-constructed buildings in winter

Typical Icelandic badstofa (communal sleeping quarters)

Farm families were pretty much confined to quarters during the height of the Icelandic winter.

Agnes Magnúsdóttir?

This is a photo floating around the internet which purports to be Agnes Magnúsdóttir, but I cannot find any verification of that.

The site where Agnes Magnúsdóttir and Friðrik Sigurðsson were beheaded

Grave marker of Friðrik Sigurðsson and Agnes Magnúsdóttir

Agnes and Friðrik were originally buried in an unmarked grave, but they were later re-interred, and this grave marker was placed.