Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness

I travelled by bus, with my things in a duffel bag. May 11: the last day of the winter fishing season. It's the time of year called "between hay and grass," looked at from the sheep's point of view, the time when the hay has run out and the grass not yet started to grow. It's often a wearisome time for ruminants: indeed, spring has always been the season in Iceland when animals and people perish.

The few folk who are on the move at this time of year are about as commonplace as the undersigned himself; dull and nondescript; they sidle off the bus at unexpected places and vanish into the moorland beside the road as if they lived in some bog there; or else the driver pulls up at some unaccountable point in the middle of nowhere and tosses out of the window some trifle, which usually lands in a puddle: a bundle of newspapers, a small bag, a parcel.