Book Review of Outside by Ragnar Jónasson (translated by Victoria Cribb)

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A meteorological thriller with a twist in the usual Icelandic happy ending.

Four friends who don’t necessarily like each other very much agree to go on a weekend ptarmigan hunt on the high moors of Eastern Icelandic. The weather is worse than anticipated. Bad weather is implicit in the words “ptarmigan hunt” because a ptarmigan’s primary survival strategy is to live somewhere too inhospitable for predators. Even in Britain, ptarmigan habitats (there are some) are not to be visited on a casual basis without sensible preparation, such as carrying a shoulder bag full of high calorie food rather than a packed lunch. The four Icelandic friends go forth onto the moors with small packed lunches of garlic sausage and dried fish, with chocolate in only one instance. With one of them being a recovering alcoholic who’s only just started drinking again, one of the others takes the interesting decision to carry a bottle of brandy as well. There are several underlying antagonisms, paranoias and secret agendas. This being a hunt, they take shotguns, though they have varying levels of competence in that regard.

With any Anglo-Saxon author, these would be the ingredients for a black comedy, but if that is what Ragnar Jónasson is about, this is an example of Nordic Deadpan, which I have encountered in real life on some occasions. Tension mounts and it goes on mounting throughout. Towards the end of the novel it looks as if there will be an Icelandic happy ending, where terrible things happen which the authorities need to be told about so things can be resolved properly, but the protagonists decide instead to live with whatever has happened and whatever the situation is. But the final sentence indicates that at least one of the surviving protagonists intends to pursue their agenda despite the implicit agreement to leave things be. I think this is probably intended to be deeply disturbing to Icelandic readers who want the skeletons to be safely locked in their closet without any fuss. Victoria Cribb has done an excellent job of translating the Icelandic text into English, but I’m not sure that the undercurrent fully translates. I can only report my suspicions as to what it is.

Outside by Ragnar Jónasson is published in the UK by Michael Joseph on the 28^th of April 2022.