{"id":8600,"date":"2019-04-18T00:08:36","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T23:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/?p=8600"},"modified":"2019-04-18T00:08:37","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T23:08:37","slug":"heida-a-shepherd-at-the-edge-of-the-world-by-steinunn-sigurdardottir-and-heida-asgeirsdottir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/heida-a-shepherd-at-the-edge-of-the-world-by-steinunn-sigurdardottir-and-heida-asgeirsdottir\/","title":{"rendered":"Heida: A Shepherd at the Edge of the World by Steinunn Sigur\u00f0ard\u00f3ttir and Hei\u00f0a \u00c1sgeirsd\u00f3ttir"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This book captures the fascinating world of a remote sheep\nfarmer in Iceland. Heida (or more properly Hei\u00f0a) is a sheep farmer who single-handedly\nruns her farm, Lj\u00f3tarsta\u00f0ir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having previously read James Rebank\u2019s A Shepherd\u2019s Life, about\nhow things work in the Lake District, you discover that while some things are the\nsame \u2013 everyone relies on quad bikes to get around \u2013 many things are different.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heida also has bigger worries. She is fighting the loss and\ndestruction of her land, with plans for a massive power plant to be built in\nher rural idyll, with a massive damn and the attendant flooding. These plans\ninvariably cause splits in communities \u2013 some perhaps happy to take the money\nand run. But Heida is a fighter and she takes political action, ultimately\nstanding for election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She might live alone on the family farm, her mother no\nlonger able to help as much as she once could, and illness sometimes taking her\naway, but Heida\u2019s life is fascinating and busy. She runs a pregnancy scanning\noperation for ewes across the country. She regularly enters sheep shearing\ncompetitions, traveling abroad to take part. Indeed for a lonely sheep farmer,\nshe\u2019s pretty cosmopolitan \u2013 having rejected an earlier potential career as a\nmodel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But mostly, she\u2019s in love with her land. She\u2019s a poet, and\nthis book is filled with her work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For an urbanite such as myself, it\u2019s sometimes hard to read\nabout shooting animals injured beyond help \u2013 Heida finds it unpleasant work too\n\u2013 and the reality of having to work basically around the clock during lambing\nseason. Yet, this book gives me new insight into that life, and it\u2019s fantastic\nto hear the words of someone so protective of that way of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is quite conversational in tone. Although it broadly\nfollows the structure of \u201ca year in the life\u201d, it has regular diversions into\nwhatever\u2019s on Heida\u2019s mind.  Steinunn\nSigur\u00f0ard\u00f3ttir has captured her tone of language, so many sentences are\nrelatively short and abrupt. Yet you believe that it\u2019s a real person behind it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It certainly left me wanting to explore some of the more remote corners of Iceland in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to John Murray Press and Netgalley for the ARC. <\/em>Heida: A Shepherd at the Edge of the World <\/em><\/a>is out now in hardback.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book captures the fascinating world of a remote sheep farmer in Iceland. Heida (or more properly Hei\u00f0a) is a sheep farmer who single-handedly runs her farm, Lj\u00f3tarsta\u00f0ir. Having previously read James Rebank\u2019s A Shepherd\u2019s Life, about how things work in the Lake District, you discover that while some things are the same \u2013 everyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[108],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8600"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8602,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8600\/revisions\/8602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}