The Raven’s Nest: An Icelandic Journey Through Light and Darkness

’Fascinating’ -Robert Macfarlane, author of The Old Ways

’Truly a thing of wonder’ - Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places

’Lyrical [and] thoughtful’ - Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment

Visiting Iceland as an anthropologist and film-maker in 2008, Sarah Thomas is spellbound by its otherworldly landscape. An immediate love for this country and for Bjarni, a man she meets there, turns a week-long stay into a transformative half-decade, one which radically alters Sarah’s understanding of herself and of the living world.

She embarks on a relationship not only with Bjarni, but with the light, the language, and the old wooden house they make their home. She finds a place where the light of the midwinter full moon reflected by snow can be brighter than daylight, where the earth can tremor at any time, and where the word for echo - bergmál - translates as ’the language of the mountain’. In the midst of crisis both personal and planetary, as her marriage falls apart, Sarah finds inspiration in the artistry of a raven’s nest: a home which persists through breaking and reweaving - over and over.

Written in beautifully vivid prose The Raven’s Nest is a profoundly moving meditation on place, identity and how we might live in an era of environmental disruption.

Sarah Thomas is a writer and filmmaker. Her films have been screened internationally, and she is a contributor to the Dark Mountain journal. Her writing has also appeared in the Guardian and the anthology Women on Nature edited by Katharine Norbury.