Fríða Ísberg: 'We are always just looking for simple stories'

Everything is changing, but one thing you can rely on is a new set of stories and a new series of podcasts from Fictionable. Spring 2025 brings us stories from Susanna Clarke, Bronia Flett, Jeremy Wikeley and PR Woods – we'll be hearing from them all over the next few weeks. But we begin with Fríða Ísberg and her short story Fingers, translated by Larissa Kyzer.

Like much of her work, Ísberg explains, Fingers began with the cadence of a character's thought.

"You don't need to know what the mother's name is," she says, "or the job description, or where they live. You don't need to know that at the beginning, you just really need the rhythm of that person. It's like knitting a sweater. You just need to know what kind of pattern you are doing and then you can just do the whole thing."

The narrator in Fingers is woven from the anxious expectations that surround relationships in the 21st century.

"It's really hard to meet the standards that we have towards the love match these days," Ísberg says.

In western societies, women are shaking off the constraints imposed on them and refusing to "sacrifice their standards".

"Power is shifting, absolutely," Ísberg says, noting that "The Icelandic word for marriage is brúðkaup, which is 'bridal buy'."

The glass may be half full for gender equality in Iceland – a country currently governed by a coalition led entirely by women – but violence against women is still a reality Ísberg can't ignore.

"I have three close friends who have had their former boyfriends just completely lose it," she says, "breaking into their apartments or staying outside their house or their car. It's really threatening and they don't see it as a threat, because they see it as a romantic gesture."

In a world where people are increasingly demanding simple narratives from their political leaders, fiction can help us navigate the messy complications of real life.

"For me," Ísberg says, "it's always more trying to understand the two different views."

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