Norðurfari; or, Rambles in Iceland

In the 1850s, an American named Pliny Miles set out to see a land that most of the world knew only from legend. What he found was stranger than any myth. This is his account of wandering through a country of fire and ice, where geysers erupted on schedule and glaciers groaned down from the highlands like frozen rivers of stone. Miles arrived with questions: Was this truly the land of sagas, of elves, of Viking poetry? His prose answers by showing the real Iceland, one that confounded Victorian expectations. He walks through Reykjavik when it's still a village of thatched roofs, treks across volcanic moors, watches fishermen pull catches from waters teeming with creatures that would have seemed monstrous to classical naturalists, and argues with merchants who insist the climate is warming, that the old winters are gone. His account carries the particular charm of someone encountering a world before tourism, before Instagram, before anyone had taught the West to see Iceland as a bucket-list destination. For readers who crave the feeling of stumbling into a place that still holds secrets, this book offers exactly that: a window into an Iceland that existed before the world discovered it.