Blaine

Icelanders

Web site of the Blaine Icelandic Heritage Society, an affiliate of the Icelandic National League of North America

Yrsa Sigurdardottir is the author of five children's books, works as a civil engineer and has finished her third mystery novel featuring feisty lawyer and single parent, Thora Gudmundsdottir. Her mysteries have been translated into fourteen languages, which greatly expands her readership since she writes in Icelandic, a language spoken primarily by the 350,000 residents of Iceland.

Sigurdardottir began her mystery-writing career with her 2005 debut, "Last Rituals," where she introduces Thora Gudmundsdottir, attorney and single mother. Thora is called in to investigate the unusual death of a German graduate student at a university in Reykjavik. As her investigation proceeds, Thora discovers a secret world of money, sex, drugs and a dark secret reaching back a thousand years into Iceland's pagan past.

In Thora Gudmundsdottir, Sigurdardottir has created an intriguing, no-nonsense protagonist, who combines a witty sense of humor with a modern day family of a young daughter, with-drawn teen son and a not very involved ex-husband.

"Last Rituals" is currently available in a hard-cover English translation. It will be coming out in paperback in April 2009. The second book in the series, "My Soul to Take," will be released in English in December, 2008.

Join author Yrsa Sigurdardottir for her presentation and reading at 7:30 pm on November 19, 2008 at Free Church Unitarian, 1218 Harrison Avenue, Blaine, Washington. The church is handicap accessible.

Agust Breidford's Memoir: His Story

The Blaine Icelandic Heritage Society

Settlement History

Webcams in the Icelandic World

Links

Coffee Time

Website Contact

   Settler's occupations ranged from farm day laborers, mill-workers, fisherman, to farmers, shop-keepers, writers and a photographer.  Icelanders formed their own churches in Blaine, created choirs and joined in community orchestras.

   Icelandic writer, Margret Benedictson, who made her home in the Blaine area, documented the lives of several Icelandic settlers in the 1920s, thirties and forties  for the Icelandic language publication "Almanak." Her writings have been translated into English and published under the title, Icelanders on the Pacific Coast.

  Elias Breidford, was Blaine's unofficial photographer for several decades, and his extensive photographic collection is now housed at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art in Bellingham, Washington, where it is being inventoried and catalogued.