Icelandic fiction | Bookshelf Fantasies

First Lines Friday is a weekly feature for book lovers created by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page.
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first.
Finally… reveal the book!

This week’s lines are from an upcoming new horror novella:

I have thought long and hard about how I would dispose of a dead body. I have carefully weighed options such as digging, sinking, burning, hiding. It’s something I do when I can’t sleep. I used to think that everyone did this, that each person I met had a plan of their own. But the day I casually mentioned mine during lunch at work, a weird and uncomfortable silence settled over the table. So it turns out that most people listen to audio books when they can’t sleep. It’s only me who hides bodies. I find it relaxing.

So what’s the book?

Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir
Release date: May 26, 2026
160 pages

Synopsis:

An Icelandic night may hide secrets and affairs – or even bodies – in this gruesomely cathartic horror thriller from the author of The Night Guest.

Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door.

When she tracks down the cat’s wayward owner, she finds a young woman just as lost and in need of help. Like a gust of cold air in a Reykjavík night, Ásta and her pet slip into Unnur’s life.

It’s unexpected, but welcome. Unnur likes the company, and she begins to rely on Ásta in turn. But like a black cat, trouble has been tailing her new friend, and Unnur is the only one there for Ásta when things take a violent turn.

The two women quickly learn: nothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.

Too creepy? Or does it sound like something you’d enjoy?

Happy Friday! Wishing everyone a great weekend!

Title: The Night Guest
Author: Hildur Knútsdóttir
Translated by: Mary Robinette Kowal
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
Publication date: September 3, 2024
Length: 208 pages
Genre: Horror
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Hildur Knutsdottir’s The Night Guest is an eerie and ensnaring story set in contemporary Reykjavík that’s sure to keep you awake at night.

Iðunn is in yet another doctor’s office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something’s not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven’t revealed any cause.

When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same ― have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.

Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night . . .

What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?

This Icelandic horror novel first came to my attention through Mary Robinette Kowal, who apparently met the author, read the book (in Icelandic!), and then asked to translate it once she learned that it wasn’t available yet in English. Thanks to MRK’s involvement, The Night Guest is being published by Tor Nightfire in September — and it’s sure to be a hit with anyone who loves creepy, ambiguous horror stories.

The main character, Iðunn, wakes up exhausted every day. Not just the kind of exhausted that comes from a rough night’s sleep, but with aching muscles and body pains. Everything hurts. But doctor after doctor find nothing wrong with her. She suspect ALS or other frightening diseases, but when her blood work all comes back fine, it’s not a relief. Something is wrong… and no one can tell her what.

Socially, Iðunn is a little awkward, always feeling like an outsider. We learn much more about her background and why her family and social life are the way they are — but I appreciated the way the information unfolds and offers an unexpected twist, so I won’t reveal it here.

Eventually, Iðunn takes even more drastic measures to figure out what’s going on at night and to make it stop. Her efforts to stop it fail in rather spectacular, dramatic ways, and she progresses from waking up sore to waking up bloody and injured — still without knowing why.

Without revealing too much else about the plot, I’ll just say that the tension builds in a way that get more and more disturbing, and as the clues to Iðunn’s nightly experiences pile up, we find ourselves increasingly at a loss to explain it all. Is it psychosis, as one doctor believes? Is it something otherworldly acting upon her? I wasn’t quite sure where I landed on these questions at the end of the book — I like clean answers, and the book doesn’t provide a simple solution. We’re left to sort out what we ourselves think might have happened — which is disturbing, yet very effective.

The storytelling is terrific. What seems straightforward at the start becomes more complicated as we go along. The horror elements creep in when least expected, until it all becomes more explicitly horrifying by the end.

Iðunn is a great example of an unreliable narrator, and we’re left to wonder right alongside her just what the hell is going on. It’s a unique story, and the short length of the book (just over 200 pages) keeps it tight and fast-moving.

The Night Guest becomes more gory and violent by the end; earlier, it leans more toward psychological horror. I’m so glad I got to experience this unusual gem, and recommend for anyone who enjoys questionable lead characters and weird, terrifying premises. If you’re a horror fan, don’t miss this one!

Final note: As an added bonus, the use of technology (especially the fitness tracker) is awesome! Also, I don’t believe I’ve ever read an Icelandic book before, and I loved the setting, the names, and the overall vibe.