Sigrun Palsdottir and Rahel Aerin Eslas

Sigrún Pálsdóttir (1967) is an Icelandic writer and historian. A recognised historian, she was the editor of the academic magazine Saga from 2009 to 2016. Pálsdóttir began her literary career with historical biographies that allowed her to explore various exciting and dramatic events that make up the pattern of history. For example, Ferđasaga (Uncertain Seas, 2010) talks about a young family of five who sailed from Iceland to New York in 1944 on a ship that was hit by a torpedo. Iceland’s booksellers named it Biography of the Year. In her debut novel Kompa (History. A Mess), Pálsdóttir makes clever use of her background as a historian and the uncertainty and doubts related to historical research – it only takes two pages from a 17th-century manuscript to undermine academic conviction, subvert a grand theory, shatter a PhD thesis. The exciting and magnificent History. A Mess was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature. Sigrún Pálsdóttir will talk to art historian Rahel Aerin Eslas.