Book Review: Land of Love and Ruins by Oddný Eir

ID: a person holds Love and Ruins by Oddný Eir up in front of a white background. The book's cover is light blue, with the title in green, moss-like words.

I’m currently in the process of adding my old book reviews to my blog! Keep your eyes open for new book reviews every week. This book review was originally published on Instagram in 2022.

Land of Love and Ruins by Oddný Eir

I have never read a more beautiful book than Eir’s Land of Love and Ruins.

Is this a bold statement to make when I’ve read hundreds (thousands?) of books? You bet. Is it true? Absolutely.

Before I unpack this daring claim, I need to be honest: Land of Love and Ruins is my comfort book. When I’m feeling burnt out (which, ironically, happened soon after writing a review of Emily and Amelia Nagoski’s Burnout), or like I want to escape for a little bit, or other books just aren’t doing it for me, I reach for Land of Love and Ruins.

So I may be a bit biased in claiming that it’s the most beautiful book I’ve ever read; I truly do love it with every fiber of my being. Having said that, the writing and images it conjures up are stunning.

Before we begin, I want to briefly mention the book’s format: diary entries. It’s written as such so the reader feels they’re looking over Eir’s shoulder, getting a second-hand view of her day-to-day life.

But more on that later; let’s circle back to the beginning: we’re dropped into Reykjavik on the Feast of St. Lucy, where the author has just come home from somewhere unknown and contemplates where their life is headed.

This first page is where the beauty comes through. In her first diary entry, Eir states:

“Love is blind, and it’s not the only one. I feel like I’m blindfolded. I’m going to untie the blindfold, write on it in the gleam of dawn. The sun is being reborn.”

From here, Eir meanders through life back in Iceland, navigating familial and romantic relationships, questioning the ever-changing state of the world, exploring the bold landscape of Iceland and engaging with its history; engaging with her history.

Each of these entries is crafted with precision, yet with a curious hand: Eir excavates her and her family’s pasts, honing details in a way that makes her prose all the more palpable:

“I recall mornings in the country with Grandma, when, after serving the tourists breakfast, we’d sit quietly at the kitchen table, sipping coffee, and one of us would notice yesterday’s page hadn’t been torn from the calendar.”

Notably–and this is something that really strikes me–is that these diary entries are not marked by specific dates (say, Tuesday, March 5th) but by important milestones in the ICalendar of Saints: Winter Solstice, Feast of St. Columba, Feast of the Cross in the Spring. Some days, she also notes the weather, or moon cycles, or the tides, anchoring us all the more in her world.

It’s because of this format, this way of marking the days, that Land of Love and Ruins feels entirely personal, as though we have found Eir’s old diary on a thrift store shelf and are flipping through the pages; we are gifted a glimpse of her life we normally wouldn’t have seen.

It’s because of all this that I claim Land of Love and Ruins to be the most beautiful book I’ve ever read. Not just due to the striking prose, but the way Eir lets the reader into her space with an intimacy that most can never dream of cultivating.

Still not convinced? Check it out for yourself. With each page, you’ll fall more and more in love with Iceland, Eir’s inquiry in life, and the sense of place cultivated by her intimate, detailed entries.

Thank you for reading! If you’d like to learn more about witchcraft, herbalism, and living an intentional life—while getting a glimpse into my own witchy, intentional practice—consider signing up for my patreon. I post a lot of behind the scenes content you won’t find anywhere else, as well as handy herb profile printables, spell sheets, book recommendations, and excerpts of my upcoming novel, Bramble Manor.