Arctic Chill Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

Print PDF

For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Iceland and our BookBrowse Review of Arctic Chill.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About this Guide
The following author biography and list of questions about Arctic Chill are intended as resources to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this book. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of perspectives from which you might approach Arctic Chill.

About the Book
Inspector Erlendur is back in another thriller by Gold Dagger Award-winner Arnaldur Indridason. Elias, a ten-year-old boy of Thai extraction, has been found stabbed outside his apartment building. But Erlendur, Sigurdur Oli, and Elinbourg conclude from Elias's history that he was a good student, and a shy but all-around sweet little boy. They cannot see how he could have been the victim of foul play. Rather, it is Elias's older brother, Niran, who makes them nervous. Unlike Elias, Niran was not born in Iceland and has had a difficult time adjusting to a different culture and a new language. He has had discipline problems at school and was rumored to hang out with a tough crowd. But as much as Erlendur would like to talk to Niran, he can't—Niran has gone missing.

Niran eventually does turn up, but he is silent. Either fear or guilt has prompted him to keep his mouth shut. In the meantime, as the clues begin to add up, the full ambivalence of Iceland's attitude towards immigrants comes to the surface. Erlendur and his team find an openly racist teacher at Elias's school who denounces immigration in the classroom. They find 'gangs' of Icelandic children who pick fights with immigrant children. Erlendur and his team are now undecided as to whether to investigate this as a hate crime or whether to implicate the brother, who has now been secreted away by concerned family members. The heinous murder of a little boy and the complex racial tensions Indridason portrays in Arctic Chill give us plenty to talk about.


Discussion Questions

1. Why might immigration be a bigger problem in Iceland than in the United States? Do you think there would be more or less racism in Iceland than in the US? Why?
2. Do you think that it's possible that either Erlendur, Sigurdur Oli or Elinbourg might have any unresolved feelings about immigration? Based on what we already know about their characters, do you think that their personal feelings could ever interfere with their conduct of an investigation?
3. What do you think account's for Erlendur's theory of Iceland's “indifference” to missing persons (p.85)? Do you agree with his account of how Iceland might be culturally more accepting of disappearances?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Picador. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.