The Museum of Whales You Will Never See: And Other Excursions to Iceland’s Most Unusual Museums
A. Kendra Greene
I bought this book, sight unseen, early in 2020, based on the appeal of its title, and a certain constricted feeling resulting from the necessary cancellation of travel during the pandemic. (I also started reading more about Ireland.) From its back cover: “A. Kendra Greene is our wise and whimsical guide through this cabinet of curiosities, showing us, in dreamlike anecdotes and more than thirty charming illustrations, how a seemingly random assortment of objects – a stuffed whooper swan, a rubber boot, a shard of obsidian, a chastity belt for rams – can map a people’s past and future, their fears and obsessions. ‘The world is chockablock with untold wonders,’ she writes, ‘there for the taking ready to be uncovered at any moment, if only we keep our eyes open.'” Iceland, I learned, is home to only 330,000 people but more than 265 museums and public collections. I like the book very much, and it has an additional bonus. I was not familiar with this quote from W.H. Auden in his Journey to Iceland: “Tears fall in all the rivers: again some driver pulls on his gloves and in a blinding snowstorm starts upon a fatal journey, again some writer runs howling to his art.”