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I still don't know why, exactly, but I do think people can have a spiritual connection to landscape, and I certainly did in Iceland.

I really think there are spirits in a place that you have to accommodate.

I feel like the people from Iceland have a different relationship with their country than other places. Most Icelandic people are really proud to be from there, and we don't have embarrassments like World War II where we were cruel to other people.

Northern Sweden holds a special kind of magic. It's cold, lonely, and the people are tough and silent, or so the stereotype says. This is Asa Larsson's home turf and I find as much joy in reading her closely observed descriptions of the environment, as in following her intriguing plots.

My thoughts fly to the old Icelandic storytellers who created our classics, whose personalities were so bound up with the masses that their names, unlike their lives' work, have not been preserved for posterity.

Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits, but also the belief in the spirit.

There is that idea of seeming crazy when you're seeing spirits or you're seeing dead people, you know what I mean? There's a certain sort of stigma, a sort of kookiness, when it comes to that.

I know 'Vikings' isn't really based in magic, but it goes back to Old World spirituality and different religions, and a lot of voodoo.

It's said that All Hallows' Eve is one of the nights when the veil between the worlds is thin - and whether you believe in such things or not, those roaming spirits probably believe in you, or at least acknowledge your existence, considering that it used to be their own. Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright.