She had been hired as a seamstress to accompany a crew organized by the Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who sought to claim the desolate island between Alaska and Russia for the British Empire.

Out of that blow, Stefansson has fashioned an epic trilogy ... Every vice and virtue can be found on this "remote island, scorched by volcanic fire and blasted by wind but with green valleys ...

It is a stark reminder of the propensity of this desolate island, with its jagged lava fields and steaming fissures, to shudder or explode. The keeper of the samples is Kári Stefánsson ...

Out of that blow, Stefansson has fashioned an epic trilogy ... Every vice and virtue can be found on this "remote island, scorched by volcanic fire and blasted by wind but with green valleys ...