"Lying in my bed, I listened to what sounded like a woman screaming outside in the dark. I picked up my pen. A month of living in this Icelandic village and I was still unaccustomed to the impenetrable January gloom and the ferocity of the wind; its propensity to sound sentient. I had started to feel like the island was trying to tell me something, had a story it wanted me to write."
"Since I was six years old, I had wanted to write, needed to write as one needs to breathe, but, influenced by wider social rhetoric regarding the arts, I had come to believe that writing wasn't serious or worthy. Yet the thought of shackling myself to some other acceptable profession by way of university applications filled me with dread, and when the local Rotary club announced it would sponsor a student for a year abroad, I saw the opportunity as a lifeline."
A sixteen-year-old exchange student lives in Sauarkrokur, a small fishing town in northern Iceland, and struggles with impenetrable January gloom and ferocious Arctic winds. Nighttime gusts carry a soundscape of weeping women that haunts dreams and prompts the student to write as a way to understand the new place. The student has long felt compelled to write but feared social stigma against the arts and dreaded committing to a conventional career. A local Rotary club offers sponsorship for a year abroad, and the student accepts the Iceland placement with surprise and relief.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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