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The Museum of Whales You Will Never See: And Other Excursions to Iceland's Most Unusual Museums
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About This Book
"Filled with charming illustrations, this delightful book about Iceland's 265 museums is as quirky and mesmerizing as the country's dreamscape itself." — Forbes Mythic creatures, natural wonders, and the mysterious human impulse to collect are on beguiling display in this poetic tribute to the museums of an otherworldly island nation , for readers of Atlas Obscura and fans of the Mütter Museum, the Morbid Anatomy Museum, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology . Iceland is home to only 330,000 people (roughly the population of Lexington, Kentucky) but more than 265 museums and public collections. They range from the intensely physical, like the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which collects the penises of every mammal known to exist in Iceland, to the vaporously metaphysical, like the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, which poses a particularly Icelandic How to display what can't be seen? In The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, A. Kendra Greene is our wise and whimsical guide through this cabinet of curiosities, showing us, in dreamlike anecdotes and more than thirty charming illustrations, how a seemingly random assortment of objects--a stuffed whooper swan, a rubber boot, a shard of obsidian, a chastity belt for rams--can map a people's past and future, their fears and obsessions. "The world is chockablock with untold wonders," she writes, "there for the taking, ready to be uncovered at any moment, if only we keep our eyes open."
Reviews
"Birds, polar bears, whales, sorcery – all are equally of value, and her celebration of Iceland's museums takes all of them into its cabinet of wonders, its exuberant, idiosyncratic enthusiasm."
"With her attention to language and her insight into human behavior, Greene makes for a charming guide, a literary traveler in the spirit of Bruce Chatwin."
"Not so much a guidebook as a meditation on how museums develop, this book from writer/artist Greene...is a tribute to museums of an island nation with only 333,000 people but more than 265 museums ..."
"A beguiling and witty assessment of a country's obsessive urge to curate."
"What draws them to the secrets of stones or makes them want to see folklore-inspired displays?"
"a delightful one-of-a-kind journey through some of Iceland's, if not the world's, most unusual museums ..."
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