The artistic urges of being Icelandic
It seems that every Icelander has the dream of publishing a novel, an album, a feature film or to put up an art exhibition of some sort.
I wouldn´t go so far as to call it a social requirement, but it definitely is encouraged. In fact this might be one of the reasons that an Icelandic culture exists at all!
For a nation with a population of only 280 thousand, a large portion must participate if there is to be any culture to speak of. (If you come to think about it, there are streets in the larger cities with similar population).
Keeping with the flow, I of course have ambitions about my first novel. Having already had a poem by me published in Iceland´s largest newspaper (which of course isn´t so large compared to most newspapers) this seems like the next logical step. (The fact that the poem was sent in just for fun does not make it any less important).
However, as I suspect that writing a novel might take some time, I´m not sure when it will be finished - and it probably won´t be for the next few months. Of course it will be written in Icelandic (part of the paradox is that no-one becomes rich writing only for Icelanders so we all have to keep our day jobs).
Until I publish the novel (or parts of it) here, there are some short stories and various other texts to be found here. None in English I´m afraid, but that´s just the way it is.