Bagley in Iceland

Bagley first went to Iceland as a passenger on a fishing vessel in 1946; he stayed only one and a half days in Reykjavík and never forgot his visit.

23 years later, he and Joan visited to research a new novel. They arrived in Iceland on Tuesday 22 July 1969; Joan said that this was some four or more years after he had first mentioned the idea to her. 1

Bagley was impressed by the sale of his books in Iceland, which totalled about 2,500 copies, a figure that, as a percentage of the population, matched the 2.5 million sold in the United States of America.2 Bagley’s novels were published in Iceland within eight months of the UK publication, compared with other countries where it could take two or three years. Commenting on Icelandic sales during an interview with William Hickey of the Daily Express just before leaving for Iceland, Bagley said:

I have my own personal publisher there. An Icelandic friend who publishes only my books. I’m even a best seller in Iceland. There are only 200,000 people there, but one in a hundred buys my books. If I kept the same proportion in England, I’d sell half a million copies of each novel. 3

Bagley was very impressed by the finished Icelandic version of the books.4 In fact, Bagley and the publisher, Torfi Ólafsson, became friends, and Ólafsson is mentioned on the dedication page of Running Blind.

Bagley and Joan held press conferences a few days prior to leaving Iceland; one of these conferences took place at The Hótel Garður in Reykjavík (Gamli Garður, Hringbraut 29, 101 Reykjavík). In these interviews, they described how they spent their time in Iceland.

bagley-in-iceland-collage

Upon arriving in Iceland, Bagley and Joan travelled directly to Greenland for three days; when they returned to Iceland, they travelled the country’s north and west, visiting historical sites and searching for ideas for a novel.5 An interview published on 15 August said that the couple had just returned from 12 days of travel. In the same interview, Joan said that when they planned the trip, she began learning Icelandic. She said:

It wasn’t really necessary though, because everyone here speaks English. In a restaurant I tried to order one pilsner and one Coca-Cola in Icelandic, but it didn’t work out so well, as we got sixteen bottles! 6

Bagley was asked why he had chosen Iceland as the setting for his next novel. In the interview with Vísir he said:

It is simply because one does not encounter adventures in, say for example, London. Then it is just a nuisance. But if you encounter them in Reykjavík, it’s an adventure. Otherwise I choose my setting, depending on whether people know a little or a lot about the country, and really the only thing that people in England hear about Iceland, are these fines, that the British receive for fishing in territorial waters. Yes, and when you want to expand your territorial waters, you shoot up a new volcanic island and wide away from the country (he added with a smile). 7

In an interview with Þjóðviljinn, he added that he had travelled highways throughout the country, and the barren landscape stimulates the imagination of how one could find their way into danger.8 Not one to stay serious for very long, Bagley said in the interview for Tíminn:

Iceland is a very unusual country. It is also an advantage how few people live here, so if I were to write some nonsense, then nobody knows the right thing, except Icelanders. 9

The couple clearly enjoyed their visit to Iceland; Bagley joked that it was easy to break an ankle walking across the lava fields and was impressed by the Icelandic radio system, which later featured in the novel. Bagley said they both liked Iceland so much that they were determined to return to spend more time exploring the country and its people. 10

Interestingly, during these interviews Bagley said that he had travelled to Antarctica the previous year (1968). He said he was working on his seventh novel set in Antarctica (at the time of the press conferences, six of his novels had been published), and that when he finished it, he would begin work on the novel set in Iceland. In fact, the novel set in Antarctica, Operation Deep Freeze (also called On the Ice and Antarctica), remains unpublished, and Running Blind was the seventh novel to be published.

Bagley and Joan left Iceland to return to the UK on Saturday 16 August having spent 26 days on their research trip.

NEXT: Read contemporary Icelandic press articles about Bagley’s research trip

References

  • Images © The Bagley Brief, © mbl.is / Árvakur hf.
  1. ‘Einhver mun brjóta á sér ökklan í hrauninu ykkar.’ Vísir, 14 Aug. 1969, p. 16. ↩︎
  2. Ibid. ↩︎
  3. ‘Want to buy a torpedo?’ Daily Express, 30 July 1969, p. 3. ↩︎
  4. ‘Kötlugos í næstu bók Desmond Bagley.’ Tíminn, 15 Aug. 1969, p. 2. ↩︎
  5. ‘Desmond Bagley skrifar bók sem hann lætur gerast hér.’ Þjóðviljinn, 15 Aug. 1969, p. 10. ↩︎
  6. ‘Kötlugos í næstu bók Desmond Bagley.’ Tíminn, 15 Aug. 1969, p. 2. ↩︎
  7. ‘Einhver mun brjóta á sér ökklan í hrauninu ykkar.’ Vísir, 14 Aug. 1969, p. 16. ↩︎
  8. ‘Desmond Bagley skrifar bók sem hann lætur gerast hér.’ Þjóðviljinn, 15 Aug. 1969, p. 10. ↩︎
  9. ‘Kötlugos í næstu bók Desmond Bagley.’ Tíminn, 15 Aug. 1969, p. 2. ↩︎
  10. ‘Einhver mun brjóta á sér ökklan í hrauninu ykkar.’ Vísir, 14 Aug. 1969, p. 16. ↩︎