In my last post below, I mentioned a scholarly article that I co-authored on the topic of creative practice research in Old Norse-Icelandic studies.
I've taken a slightly different approach to this topic in a piece that I've just written for the magazine Kill Your Darlings. There, I reflect on the apparent impossibility of fully inhabiting the perspectives of those who lived a long time ago and in very different circumstances from ours, but also on the necessity one feels as a writer to attempt that inhabiting. After all, I do want to better understand the people of the past, and to do so through creative writing involves a portrayal of their inner lives.
The piece steps through these topics while also traversing the fields of Haukadalur, where much of the action of my novel The Sorrow Stone takes place.
It is available online here.
