Animal Life

Ólafsdóttir follows up her award-winning Miss Iceland with the story of Dómhildur, named in her family’s tradition after an unmarried midwife among her relatives, in this case a grandaunt whose apartment she inherits as an adult. Dómhildur, herself a midwife who is both unmarried and childless, has delivered nearly 2,000 babies, and the ghost of her grandaunt continues to haunt her; hospital colleagues continually recount her grandaunt’s many witticisms and describe the cakes she brought in for new mothers. It’s Christmastime, and Dómhildur meteorologist sister has just predicted a major storm, so Dómhildur remains at home sorting through her grandaunt’s many papers. Before her death, her grandaunt had asked her to “stitch her work together” with the aim of understanding humankind, coincidence, and connectedness, as well as light (birth) and darkness (death). The word midwife means mother of light in Icelandic, and as the descendant of midwives on her mother’s side and of funeral directors on her father’s, Dómhildur finds herself caught between light and dark while reflecting deeply on her aunt’s work as the snows arrive.