Featuring Sverrir Sigurdsson

I love and support Indie Authors

This week, I am featuring Sverrir Sigurdsson, who co-authored “Viking Voyager: An Icelandic Memoir: with his wife, Veronica Li.

His book Viking Voyager: An Icelandic Memoir is a personal story of growing up in Iceland during turbulent times. His upbringing inspired him to travel the world like his Viking forefathers. His vivacious personal story captures the heart and soul of modern Iceland.

1. Tell me about yourself.
First of all, I want to thank you, Mitos, for featuring me in your newsletter despite losing your home to the hurricane recently. I’ve seen your courage and resilience in your touching memoir, Shards of Time, and you’re once again exhibiting these admirable traits.

I was born in Iceland in exciting times. During the first five years of my life, I knew nothing but war. In 1941 Britain invaded Iceland to pre-empt Hitler from using the island as a stepping stone to North America. Because of its strategic position, my dirt-poor, obscure country became a linchpin in the Second World War. Cavorting with foreign soldiers and listening to the news made me very much aware of a bigger world out there. Reading the sagas about my Viking forefathers’ exploits reinforced my curiosity about the world. At the first chance, I took off to Finland to study architecture at age 19. Since then, I’ve traveled all over the globe, working as an architect for both private companies and international development agencies. I’m now retired and settled in the U.S. with my wife and coauthor, Veronica Li

2. Synopsis of your book (memoir) in one sentence.
My memoir is about the making of a modern-day Viking and his world-wide adventures.

3. Why did you write this book?
I love to regale my friends with stories about my travels. Some of them encouraged me to write them down. I started writing bits and pieces and saved them in a folder called Episodes on my hard drive. It was like dumping photos in a shoebox. One day, I showed some pages to my wife, Veronica, who’s a published author. When she told me it was great, I thought she was just humoring me. But when she offered to help me turn my ramblings into a book, I realized she was serious. Our joint project turned out to be a godsend during the covid lockdown.

4.What message or lessons did you want your readers to take from this book?
There’s a saying: travel broadens the mind. I must add: travel has also expanded my soul, strengthened my character and enriched my life. My Viking forefathers traveled the world to loot and plunder and bring home riches. Modern-day Vikings don’t do that anymore, thank goodness. We travel to learn, study, and to contribute on the world stage. At the end of my life, I can say I’ve found my fortune in an exciting career that required me to work with people of diverse cultures. Those experiences are worth more than any treasure.

My message to people of any age but especially to the young is: travel, spend some time in a foreign country. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll discover about other people but most importantly, about yourself.

5. I understand you wrote your book with your wife. What was it like working with your wife together with this book? How was the process?
I’m happy to say we’re still happily married. The beginning was rocky as we were extreme opposites in personality, interests, and culture. (She’s Chinese American originally from Hong Kong.) She’s a people person and calls me a “thing” person, good only at brick-and-mortar stuff. At some point, we realized our differences were our strength. She was able to tease details out of me (such as feelings buried deep down), and I was able to teach her about car engines, geology, and building construction, all of which were vital to my story.

The first step in the process was to determine the focus of my memoir. Once this was in place, we had a framework to hang my episodes on. Each chapter became a building block for developing the storyline.

6. How many hours do you write in a day?
We both write in the morning, say 9-12. That’s the sitting down part. My brain, however, was constantly working on it.

7. Are you currently working on a book at the moment?
I just finished translating Viking Voyager into Icelandic. We were in Iceland in November for the book launch, just in time for the “Christmas Book Flood.” Icelanders exchange books as Christmas gifts. On dark winter days, we do nothing but stay home and read.

8. What are you doing when you are not writing?
I’m a carpenter at heart. (If my sister hadn’t nudged me into architecture, I would have trained to be a carpenter.) In my retirement, I designed and built my dream house with my own hands. New projects always come my way—a deck, trellis, rock garden, patio, and of course the numerous maintenance jobs.

9. What would you advise emerging Indie authors?
Write what you’re passionate about, not what publishers and agents think are commercially valuable. If your interest coincides with theirs, that’s great, but most of the time that’s not the case. Take my memoir for example. Several agents expressed interest in my manuscript because Iceland had become a tourist hot spot. However, they wanted only the first half of the book about my Icelandic roots and not the second half about my travel adventures outside of Iceland.

I see my childhood in Iceland and my later travels as the same story. It’s about my Viking heritage and how I lived it out as a grownup. Thus, to preserve the integrity of my memoir, I went to an Indie publisher. The result is most gratifying.

10. What are you reading right now?
I have a to-be-read pile of memoirs from the Facebook group called We Love Memoirs. It’s a wonderful group of memoir writers and readers supporting each other and having fun.

11. If you were a fruit or a vegetable, what would you want to be and why?
I think I’m rather like a carrot. It grows in a wide range of climates, from the tropics to places close to the Arctic, like Iceland. I’ve travelled to many places in my life and have learned to be as adaptable as the carrot. My complexion is reddish too, especially after exposure to the sun.

Check out more of my author interviews here.