KVÖLDVAKA: An Evening Wake with Sarah Thomas, author of The Raven's Nest

We invite you to join us for an evening with Sarah Thomas, author of The Raven’s Nest: a memoir about resilience and learning to belong, set in the elemental landscape of Iceland’s Westfjords.

The kvöldvaka is an Icelandic tradition, an evening gathering to which people bring tasks of knitting, mending and making. One person reads by the light of a lamp, while others sit and listen while working with their hands. On 1 April 2023, we will hold a kvöldvaka in the old shoe shop in Östervåla. Sarah will read from her book and share the stories of her time in Iceland, as well as her experiences taking the kvöldvaka tradition to different parts of Europe.

This is our first public event in Skolunkans, the old shoe shop, our new events space for a school called HOME. Over the past three years, most of our activity as a school has taken place online. We got to know Sarah because she was a participant in Homeward Bound, the online series we held in the spring of 2020, and she went on to become an active member of the Long Table, the ongoing community that grew out of that series. While she was working on The Raven’s Nest, Sarah held a kvöldvaka with our members over Zoom where she read a chapter of the book, so it feels deeply appropriate that we can welcome her here to Östervåla to open a new chapter in our work as a school.

We will serve fika as part of the event. Copies of the Raven's Nest will be available to buy and there will be a signing at the end.

Praise for The Raven’s Nest:

“A deeply thoughtful, vivid, enquiring, genre-traversing book, closely attentive to the people and landscapes with which it dwells. Sarah’s writing draws readers northwards and inwards upon a fascinating journey.” – Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland

“This book maps the self, the world, and the spaces in between with such tender care. Truly a thing of wonder.” — Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places

“The Raven’s Nest is about a meeting of worlds. Sarah arrives in Iceland with a ‘guest’s clear eyes’, as Icelanders say. A sincere and perceptive book that explores love, adventure and the search for connections in a big world.” — Andri Snaer Magnason, author of On Time and Water